Celestalon and Holinka on Warlords of Draenor changes
by Matthew Rossi 
Feb 28th 2014 at 1:00AM
Racial abilities
- Weapon Specialization racials (like the ones dwarves, humans and orcs had) are gone, due to hit/expertise also having been removed.
- Worgen Darkflight is remaining unchanged.
- Troll Berserking is reduced to 15% haste.
- Humans will gain a redesigned The Human Spirit, which will add to two secondary stats of your choice. Every Man For Himself may or may not be changed, based on itemization changes.
- Orcs were redesigned - Blood Fury was left intact, but Hardiness is now a 10% reduction, down from 15%. Command racial is unchanged.
- Gnome's Expansive Mind racial, for instance, is now good for all resources, not just mana. Escape Artist drops to a 1 minute CD, and Shortblade Specialization is gone, replaced with Nimble Fingers, a new haste racial.
- Undead are seeing minor changes - Will of the Forsaken up to a 3 minute CD, Touch of the Grave seeing scaling tweaks only.
- Dwarves gain Might of the Mountain, a 2% crit damage/healing racial, and Stoneform now removes curses and magic effects, but still does not break CC and can't be used while CC'd.
- For Goblins, little change - Time is Money is now actual haste.
- Draenei Heroic Presence will now add to a primary stat of your choice. Gift of the Naaru now heals over five seconds.
- Night elves see a bonus to Quickness that adds a 2% passive buff to movement speed and a completely new racial, Touch of Elune, which adds 1% haste at night and 1% crit during the day. Shadowmeld is unchanged.
- The Tauren racial Endurance becomes +X Stamina, while a new racial named Brawn increases their critical damage/healing.
- Blood Elves gain the new Arcane Acuity racial (passive 1% crit) and Arcane Torrent now affects all resources, not just mana/rage.
Abilities/Spells/Itemization
- Tricks of the Trade no longer increases damage. It's imagined that it will be used to help pick up adds. It's now free to use.
- Mage's water elementals will retain their Freeze ability, but a new glyph will teach another ability that shares a cooldown with it.
- Rogues will see their various cooldowns go spec specific, with Killing Spree and Adrenaline Rush for Combat, Vendetta for Assassination and Shadow Dance for Subtlety. Shadow Blades is gone.
- Only Heroism/Bloodlust/Time Warp/Ancient Hysteria remain as raid DPS cooldowns. Abilities like Stormlash Totem and Skull Banner are gone.
- Raid-wide defensive CD's like Devotion Aura and Demoralizing Banner are staying, in concept, although specific ones may or may not.
- Shattering Throw will be a glyph that teaches you the ability, not one that changes Heroic Throw.
- My heart will be broken forever if Glyph of Bear Trap doesn't make it live, even though I'm pretty sure Celestalon was kidding there.
- The SoO trinkets have convinced Blizzard to not implement Amplify and Cleave at this time.
- The current thinking is to have five stats - Crit, Mastery, Haste, Readiness and Multistrike.
- Disarms gone - set bonuses will be redesigned, weapon chains obsolete
- They're concerned about root breaks and haven't gotten where they want to be with them yet
- While silences are mostly decoupled from them, interrupts themselves will remain, as the gameplay of them is seen as more interesting
- Interrupts will still lockout specific schools when used.
- Charge will be a root, not a stun. Warbringer will be a short stun off of DR. It will be a 1.5 second stun.
- Enslave Demon/Undead were mentioned as CC spells that are less of a concern in terms of removing CC.
- Silencing Shot will go, but Counter Shot will get to stay.
- All interrupts with a silencing effect now will lose it in Warlords, and Holinka provides examples. Pure Silences like Silence and Strangulate will remain.
- The feeling is that there's too much CC, and CC breakers won't be targeted as aggressively.
- Crits do 25% less damage to players.
Filed under: Blizzard, News items, Warlords of Draenor
