Posts with tag Featured-stories

Wow. Have you caught your breath yet? Patch 3.1 looks like it's going to be a massive one, with the promise of Ulduar and now a preview of some of the upcoming class changes. Things are to change quite a bit. While a lot of the changes apply to PvE, Blizzard seems to be sticking true to its lofty ambition of balancing both the PvE experience right along with PvP. Even the biggest change across the board, intended for PvE, will be felt in PvP.

The massive mana regeneration changes should have a palpable impact, particularly in Arenas, because once you get past the burst and Resilience begins to stack up, it becomes a healer's game. It becomes a game of endurance and a matter of burning through the opposing team's healers' mana pool. The nerf to Spirit's contribution to mana regeneration is huge -- one of the prominent trinkets in professional Arena play in 2008 was the Earring of Soulful Meditation because of its on-use Spirit bonus.

We'll have to see exactly how harsh the changes will be, but hopefully these changes are a step towards tuning down healer dominance in high rated Arena play. One proposed change is the increased heal penalty for Divine Plea, which is one of the tools that have propelled Holy Paladins to the top of Arena rankings. However, Blizzard notes that certain mana regeneration talents will be buffed, so these changes might balance out, anyway. Let's take a look at the impact of different class changes after the jump.