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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: Which class will change the most?
by Gregg Reece 
Apr 7th 2010 at 8:00AM
While I'm sure that the class you're waiting to hear info on the most is your own class, I've got a little bit of a different question for you: Which class do you think is going to be changing the most in Cataclysm?
Will it be warriors, due to the impending rage normalization? How about death knights, since blood will be the only tanking spec after the expansion hits? Will it be hunters with their mana changing to a focus system or warlocks with their complete revamp of Soul Shards? Let us know what you think.
| Death Knight | |
|---|---|
| Druid | |
| Hunter | |
| Mage | |
| Paladin | |
| Priest | |
| Rogue | |
| Shaman | |
| Warlock | |
| Warrior |
Filed under: Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior, Breakfast Topics, Death Knight, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 6)
Zodiac Apr 7th 2010 9:34AM
I don't know why people see the Hunter resource change as "major". The pet change for hunters was major. Changing from mana to focus should have little affect in comparison. Many classes will change priorities on their gear. Prior to the Careful Aim talent, hunters avoided Int. Now they'll avoid it again as there will be no benefit from it for their resource pool (I expect the talent will be removed). How fast the focus fills up will determine how quickly they can use abilities, so I foresee short fights having a DPS decrease, but long fights a possible DPS boost, since they won't have to switch to AotV to regen mana. Similarly, removal of shards shouldn't change things for warlocks, except that they won't be gathering them anymore (and shard bags will change to something else). The rage change will help the undergeared and low-leveled, and probably slow down higher-level/gear rage-users, but that's no bigger a change than that of hunters and warlocks.
The biggest change has to be Death Knights. Proper talents specialization is hugely important to anyone's game play. DKs are incredibly flexible where those talents are concerned. Blood are self-healers. Unholy are anti-spell. Frost... have bad colds or something (I honestly don't see much tank stuff in the frost tree besides imp frost presence and toughness. Maybe I'm just blind). Turning blood into the only tank tree is going to be a major change for a significant portion of the DK community, esp. frost and unholy tanks as well as blood DPS. Blood tanks should also notice the change, as some of the damage talents will be vanishing from the tree, and that'll be a big help.
Henry Apr 7th 2010 9:49AM
Not paladins. The evidence that is given is often regarding the fact that they are going to have to wait a week for their result because they are 'deep in development'.
That just means Paladins were the last class that the devs got around to. They tend to work on each class 1 at a time. If you'll remember from the WOTLK Beta, some classes had new skills all the way to 80 when others had no new skills.
Angus Apr 7th 2010 10:12AM
I actually see Shaman as a big possibility. Hunters are moving to focus, which drops Int on all DPS mail. So enhance is going to have a tiny mana pool. This means that in PVP they are going to need major boost since healing themselves was on of their only counters to other melée. Well, if you run OOM after 2 heals you aren't winning anything.
Add to this having haste help mana regen somehow ( maybe Shamanistic Rage being changed again) and enhances bottom 3 tiers needing replacing since they are almost all the kind of talents Blizzard said would vanish and you already see major changes.
Elemental is going to be balanced to wear resto gear and like it... And maybe even scale better. They are going to need some talents replaced. Be interested to see how their bottom tier is replaced.
Finally you have resto which might get more toys to heal, or at least better toys. Their tree is also full of "make x better by y" talents.
Joe Apr 7th 2010 10:20AM
Why does people think hunters getting rid of mana and going to focus is really going to change their game play that much? They will still have a bar, just a different color... they will still probably play the same them for the most part.
Now, I am thinking the warlocks soul shard system will be the biggest change... right now they are more of an annoyance, but now they will be giving us additional CDs that will buff one of our many spells, so you will have to be very specific when you use them.
Grovinofdarkhour Apr 7th 2010 3:55PM
The hunter change to focus is HUGE. And it SUCKS. Put those two together and it SUCKS HUGE. Here, allow me to explain.
We're going from a system where, if we know how to manage our mana, we'll have to switch to viper sting certainly no earlier than 2 minutes into a boss fight (and possibly not until after the fight is over), to a system where we have to think about our focus regen literally 4 seconds into the fight.
The new hunter sequence is going to be something like this:
Hunter's Mark, /tar tank, misdirect, /tar boss, send pet, scorpid sting, arcane shot,
wait,
wait...
wait...
steady shot,
wait,
wait...
wait...
wait...
steady shot,
wait,
wait...
wait...
wait...
chimaera shot to refresh serpent sting,
wait,
wait...
wait...
wait...
Point is, if I wanted to do two or maybe three things then wait, by which I mean if I wanted to play a rogue, I would've @#$%ing rolled one. And many moons from now when you're wondering why Deathwing isn't down yet, it's because the hunter is standing in the back waiting to shoot and wondering (A) where Blizzard got the idea that an energy system without finishing moves would be viable for anybody, and (B) what class he should roll next.
Grovinofdarkhour Apr 7th 2010 4:05PM
Might I further add that just because they originally intended to have a focus system for hunters in development doesn't mean that throwing one together on a lark five years later isn't recklessly destructive and a ridiculously bad idea. We're being sacrificed on the altar of standardization while they chant some mantra about "mana bars are only for casters, mana bars are only for casters..." In my perfect world they would have gotten the focus thing right BACK IN DEVELOPMENT and we didn't all learn a different system in the first place, but that didn't happen. They gave us mana, we learned to live on mana. It is what it is. You can't "abort" a 5-year old.
Sorry man, you asked.
I think I need a cigarette now...
Brownb Apr 7th 2010 10:22AM
I would think the paladin class is probably in for some deep, deep changes. Paladins have, since the beginning of the game, been the holy warriors, out to destroy the scourge. I can see it now : Tirion runs into battle, mace gleaming, "By the light, undead beast be gone" soldier whispers" sir, those are all elementals" tirion " well crap, okay, I'm out of spells. I got nothing for elementals. Jaina, you got any kind of anti-elemental spell or anything?"
BoB Apr 7th 2010 11:20AM
What happened to Pallys just running up to something and slashing its brains out? Paladins don't need spells, we have plate, bubbles, and awesome swords+shields. And healing. Tirion could just slice it up, when he gets hurt, go noob and heal himself after using Crusader Strike for the 9999th time in the instance.
Dan828 Apr 7th 2010 2:55PM
Well, let's just hope we don't end up as back-of-the-raid healbots again. As my first toon was a pally back in BC, I still remember the "lolret, stfu and heal noob." The only way you could raid was as holy. Ret was such a joke that even the devs talked about it being only something you'd do while leveling. And prot AoE grinding made even that a silly thing to do.
Dendallin Apr 7th 2010 10:32AM
I really think the biggest changes will be coming to the Hunter Class. As a main hunter myself, I can say for sure that I am really scared that the new change from Mana to Focus will make us just a ranged rogue (which I play and is COMPLETELY different than how a hunter plays). If this were our only change, I would say that its a big deal, but probably not the biggest, but also take into account the fact that we are having a complete reitemization of our gear. The removal of intellect and the increase in agi, which will double in its contribution to AP but drop (by an unknown amount) in its contribution to crit. This will mean a reworking of all the current spreadsheets to account for these changes. Also take into account the removal of Armor Penetration (which Marksman hunters live off of for the most part) and its replacement with Haste (almost no benefit at the moment to hunters, though it may become better when 4.0 hits) and Crit (which is good for hunters) and you have yet another scary aspect of Cataclysm for hunters. Also, the removal of passive talents is going to hit almost every class in major reworkings, which means a HUGE overhaul to Beast Mastery, which is almost completely Passive talents buffing pets, and Marksmanship, which has a lot of passive talents to damage, crit, crit damage, etc. (this change will also affect Rogues very hard). Returning back to the change from Mana to Focus, this is not just a resource system change but a complete gameplay change! If you don't believe me, go from playing a Paladin to playing a Rogue. Both use melee, both have instant casts, but would you say that they have similar play styles? Hunters are getting a COMPLETE overhaul to almost all their combat mechanics, from being less cooldown dependent, to having to manage Focus (instead of being a cooldown/GCD resource class which we are now), having shots and cast times being completely changes, not having to go into Viper (which means we will only ever be in Dragonhawk? any reason for the other Aspects then?), and the removal of ammo even, Hunters are in for some HUGE changes.
Now while we are in for some huge changes, it may not seem like that much, since all the other classes have had their info released relatively lately. Hunters have known we were getting reformulated for a few months now. I think Blizzard specifically looked at which class they were going to change the most (one of the ones that got pretty much left out of MAJOR changes for Wrath) and started posting things about it a while ago so the Hunters could get used to the changes in little bits without being completely brain-fried on the day that they released the Class Changes.
Celess Apr 7th 2010 10:35AM
Most people seem to be suggesting DK, Paladin, Lock and Hunter. I play all these classes at endgame, besides Paladin, here's my two cents:
Paladin - I'm going to disregard this as we have no info at all.
Death Knight - They're making one tree tanking specialty. That shakes a talent tree only, not the class.
Hunter - Swapping out of mana to focus IS a big thing. It's not just a change of X Mana to Y focus, because focus regens much faster than mana. It'll completely alter about 90% of their abilities and yes, make them much more like "Ranged Rogues". Rogues don't really have abilities like steady shot and the like. It's going to be interesting.
Warlock - Okay, so we'll still have mana, but gone are soul shard items, which are a fundamental part of the class, especially as Demonology. I'll burn through 32 in a raid night as Demonology, and whilst they're more an annoyance than not (ie, it wouldn't hurt the game too much to just outright remove them) they're giving warlocks an entirely new mechanic. It's not swapping out mana, it's on top of that. It's a whole new system on top of what we have now, taking us a step away from mages, giving us some cool cooldown based resources. Similar to runes? Not from what I gather, but I think locks have got the big tweak by far.
Still, anything that seperates us more from the mages!
jp Apr 7th 2010 10:50AM
Hunters
They will be in a constant flux of nerf/buff as Blizzard attempts to make focus work for them.
Todd Apr 7th 2010 11:04AM
The real question, poll, is... what class will be changing the least?
Nina Katarina Apr 7th 2010 11:07AM
They just edited the dates in the blue post - now the only info we're going to get today is Shaman.
Nina Katarina Apr 7th 2010 11:09AM
But it's not like I'm looking obsessively at the blue post tracker....
(hits refresh again)
Nina Katarina Apr 7th 2010 11:21AM
Wait - they just corrected it for European time zones. So we're getting Shaman information before midnight Greenwich time, but the rest will be later.
Galilyse Apr 7th 2010 11:50AM
Sigh...way to put us out of our misery Blizz. So now when do you want to give us the news of our eternal damnation? :/
Raineva Apr 7th 2010 11:52AM
It seems like a toss up with the already given info between Warlocks and Hunters. Warlocks because the shard system is getting a complete overhaul to a point that 'shards' are going to be something that we use to boost our performance at moments we deem worthy.
Hunters because they are getting a new resource entirely which could change the class in any number of ways!
myse Apr 8th 2010 3:02AM
where can i few the class changes. its now 7th of april so where can i read them
clundgren Apr 7th 2010 1:01PM
I find it funny how many people assume that the upcoming class announcements will be about nerfs.
Blizzard will be announcing few, if any, nerfs with these upcoming class changes. They want you to be looking forward to Cataclysm so that you will, you know, BUY IT. So they are going to tease us with all the good stuff we are going get.
The nerfs will be in patch 4.1.