about time too ^ ^ some burst cooldowns outside of trinkets or metamorphosis is way overdue.

Focus for hunters instead of mana is a much MUCH bigger change than no shards for warlocks, especially since warlocks will still have shards - they will just act more like dethknigget runes instead of being an item in your bags.

Warlocks only ever used shards for a handful of skills anyway (and only 2 attacks), hunters use mana for pretty much everything except aspects (and I think those cost mana to change also back in early-mid classic WoW, ugh)

Hunter spells cost X focus rather than Y mana, REALLY big change there, I just don't know how hunters will adapt to this most massive of changes.

I think hunters are going to see a huge change. Moving from a cooldown-limited playstyle to a resource-limited one is pretty major.

The soul shard change for warlocks is a pretty big change. I play demonology and sometimes decimation goes away just before the soulfire goes out and yadda yadda, a few wipes and your soul shards get perilously low. It can be inconvenient, but that's not a huge thing. Finally having the same amount of bag space available as every other class will be nice, too. However, this is a small part of what will change for warlocks.

Removal of spell power is the bigger change. Warlocks really don't care about anything else. Spell power pretty much trumps all; haste, crit, and spirit are just tiebreakers. Warlocks used to stack stamina and be the hearty casters who could take a beating in a pinch. That went away in Wrath. Now to get spell power, we'll need to stack intellect - a stat we've never needed much thanks to Life Tap. Also, with spirit as a healer stat, Life Tap glyphs and Fel Armor will need an overhaul. How will Blizzard preserve the warlock identity when we're no longer forcibly removing the souls of our enemies and we itemize like that OTHER magic casting pure class? I suspect the important changes will be regarding this.

I'm gonna say warlocks are definitely one of the bigger changes. Far bigger than hunters.

The basic gameplay for hunters will likely not change very much. Their abilities will probably be mostly unchanged. The difference will be that instead of having a slowly regenerating mana bar, they'll have a quickly regenerating focus bar.

Playing warlocks, on the other hand, will be a totally different experience from the ground up, with an entirely new mechanic designed to be used in every single fight, to boost the power of any number of abilities. This means not only that one of our oldest mechanics is changing dramatically, but that many warlock abilities will now have a secondary special effect to use in conjunction with Soul Burn. Throw on top of this major changes to itemization and the hinted possibility of an entirely new pet, and, well, I'm sure you can see how things might be a bit of a bigger change for us.

Death Knights are also pretty major, as this means the playstyle for one spec will become focused and very different from how it is now, and also means that lots of talents will be shuffled out of other trees, making the options for each tree very different.

My first character I rolled was an orc warlock on a trail account. I loved the idea of ripping the souls from my enemies as they died :) So much so, that about a year later when I finally got my own account I rolled a warlock as my current main. I hope that the soul shard mechanic changes keep the essence true to what it has been and what I love about it, but the implementation is kinda lame. I carry 5 SS around with and pretty much only use them when I die or when my spellstone runs out of charges.

I had a tossup between Locks and DKs... But I think lock wins. My main has been a lock since Vanilla, and there's been a lot of changes (can't believe you can BUY a dreadsteed), but this next iteration will be a whole new game. Just hoping we don't become indistinguishable from mages.

And if you only carry around 5 stones... I'm amazed. I'm still not comfortable with being limited to 32!

"Just hoping we don't become indistinguishable from mages."

Adding a whole new resource system under our mana bar pretty much ensures that we'll become even more different from mages. Instead of a simple reagent used to summon pets and use a handful of abilities, soul shards will now be a vital component in every fight.

Nooooo....Death Knights. Look at them throughout Wrath. Every major patch changed the class so that you had to re-learn how to play. A new expansion worth of changes and they're suddenly going to be ranged casters with a healing tree.