Cataclysm Stat & System Changes

[Bethrezen]

Keep in mind also with these changes for parry, their benefits for PvP for Warriors/DK's, and their meaning as well vs bosses. Threat will become a concern for a tank if they don't have adequate amounts of expertise to negate Boss parrys, to keep up respectable amount of TPS, due to boss mitigating their inc attacks. SOUNDS INTERESTING TO ME.

[Brookes]

Read parry again, it says you stop 50% damage of the inital attack and then 50% of the next attack. Parrying twice in a row isn't so unlikely.

While this is true, I doubt it'd double dip. More than likely it'd just reset it back to give you another 50% reduction to your next attack. So if you parried directly after a parry, you'd take one more 50% dmg attack. That or maybe they won't LET you parry so soon after. Maybe after you parry you can't mitigate damage until you take the next hit.

[Naydie]

Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.


Mobs scaling with player strength, not sure I like that.

[Kryptiki]

Keep in mind also with these changes for parry, their benefits for PvP for Warriors/DK's, and their meaning as well vs bosses. Threat will become a concern for a tank if they don't have adequate amounts of expertise to negate Boss parrys, to keep up respectable amount of TPS, due to boss mitigating their inc attacks. SOUNDS INTERESTING TO ME.

Aside from the armor changes, all of what you mentioned makes me feel like leveling my warrior to 85 first of my toons! The parry change is very interesting. What about the added miss chance we got from defense? I'll miss that, too, but I'll live, so to speak.

[Brookes]

Combat ratings - All ratings will be much harder to "cap out" at maximum gear levels. Ratings will be steeper in Cataclysm, and creatures in later tiers of content will be harder to hit or crit, similar to how level-83 mobs are harder to hit or crit than level-80 mobs.


Mobs scaling with player strength, not sure I like that.

I might be wrong, but isn't that the same thing that happens each expansion? I.E. you'll still need 17% hit rating to hit a lvl 88, or what have you, but that 17% will take around 500 hit rating instead of the ~300 that's needed now.

[parrademun]

Congrats on making death knight tanks even more useless

[Kaedalmael]

What are your feelings on RP/Focus/Energy regeneration increasing with haste?

edit: post script

p.s. that's the change that ACTUALLY scares me.

They seem to have not mentioned rage gen in that, I dunno if that was intentional or not... Anyways, I think it could be good, if not overdone. It could help out, say, a fury warrior, who would then have to worry a little less about having the best gear in order to have good rage gen(I didn't play my DK for very long, so not really sure if their RP would be affected in about the same way?), and for rogues, might boost Combat spec's damage if they get energy back more from haste, so having 2 equal speed weapons would be more beneficial.

[Brookes]

Aside from the armor changes, all of what you mentioned makes me feel like leveling my warrior to 85 first of my toons! The parry change is very interesting. What about the added miss chance we got from defense? I'll miss that, too, but I'll live, so to speak.

I'm not sure they'd let that fly in pvp, seems like they'd restrict it to pve, or at least make a talent for it. (although seeing tanks wreck arenas lately, i can't put much past them...)
Also, bosses taking less damage if they parry...that would really boost up the importance of tanks having expertise. Another cap they absolutely must hit.
Implying it will affect mobs.

[Waterisbest]

Under the new system, all stats will be useful the more you have - just like crit is now. However, tanks must be un-crit'able and the only way to do that was to hit 535/540 in defense. So instead of saying, "you must get defense to 540 and then take stats you like," you can now say, "take what stats you like." This just makes it a lot easier to guarantee you're at the right defense score at any level without having to calculate it and constantly balance the stat at each level. In short, it just makes gearing tanks (especially at levels 1 - 80) less annoying.

Thanks for this

[Brookes]

They seem to have not mentioned rage gen in that, I dunno if that was intentional or not... Anyways, I think it could be good, if not overdone. It could help out, say, a fury warrior, who would then have to worry a little less about having the best gear in order to have good rage gen(I didn't play my DK for very long, so not really sure if their RP would be affected in about the same way?), and for rogues, might boost Combat spec's damage if they get energy back more from haste, so having 2 equal speed weapons would be more beneficial.

Rage is already affected by haste, e.g., the faster you swing the more rage you're getting, no?
Rogues already have crazy regen on their energy, although I think it might make feral a little easier.
Noone can really say if hunters will need it or not, since noone knows exactly how focus will work yet. Supposedly it'll regen twice as fast as energy, with most spells costing ~40-60, so maybe it won't be as annoying as playing an energy class.

And how can I forget beloved dk's? Faster runes is interesting, wonder how that would work with imp uh presence...

[Grimraven]

Thank god, I won't be playing wow when cataclysm comes out.

[Grundy]

I wonder what they are planning to do with the talent under survival that converted intellect to attack power.

[Kryptiki]

They seem to have not mentioned rage gen in that, I dunno if that was intentional or not... Anyways, I think it could be good, if not overdone. It could help out, say, a fury warrior, who would then have to worry a little less about having the best gear in order to have good rage gen(I didn't play my DK for very long, so not really sure if their RP would be affected in about the same way?), and for rogues, might boost Combat spec's damage if they get energy back more from haste, so having 2 equal speed weapons would be more beneficial.

I mistyped for the Deathknight. Their runes would come back faster due to increasing haste (picture something like an Improved 'Improved Unholy Presence'), my bad. Rage generation is a little different and by increasing haste on a warrior (given same level of AP, crit, etc...) a warrior would generate more rage due to more main and off-hand swings (warriors generate rage by auto attack damage and taking damage...if more classes have haste, then I guess warriors will also generate more rage by also getting hit more frequently).

How this all may affect rogues scares the crap out of me.

[Brookes]

Thank god, I won't be playing wow when cataclysm comes out.

Thank god indeed. Thanks for the announcement, but I'm hard pressed to assume anyone's heartbroken about it.

[DontTrustTheGnomes22]

Hold up now. Correct me if im wrong because I only read this once but are they evening out the armor for cloth,leather,mail and plate? isent the whole point of plate to be stronger and more durable then cloth? ???

[QTKamos]

Stat changes, i dont care if they bloody stuck a monkey up there as a stat providing they fail less at designing elemental shaman set bonuses.

[Kryptiki]

I'm not sure they'd let that fly in pvp, seems like they'd restrict it to pve, or at least make a talent for it. (although seeing tanks wreck arenas lately, i can't put much past them...)
Also, bosses taking less damage if they parry...that would really boost up the importance of tanks having expertise. Another cap they absolutely must hit.
Implying it will affect mobs.

I don't know what you're getting at with the first part of your post; I'll just miss the added miss chance we got from being at 540 defense. As for the seemingly greater importance of expertise, I find that to be VERY interesting, yet again. Maybe I should race change to an orc...and get an axe.

[Brookes]

Hold up now. Correct me if im wrong because I only read this once but are they evening out the armor for cloth,leather,mail and plate? isent the whole point of plate to be stronger and more durable then cloth? ???

I don't think it's that extreme. It's just a potential fulcrum shift away from world of meleecraft. Hell, a bit of armor would do squishies some good.

[DrgnDancer]

]
What good healer isn't doing this already? Are you suggesting that good healers press one button to win? Heck, even good Paladins press more than HL, and they are arguably the most "spammy" healer by your definition.

If your not reducing the number of GCDs cast, and I'm already being as efficient as I can with my spells, how am I suppose to change my playstyle to reflect regen nerfs w/o some drastic change to the mana cost of spells, or the amount which they heal?

WotlK 'Clysm
-------- ---------
GCD1: Heal1 GCD1: Heal1
GCD2: Heal1 GCD2: Heal1
GCD3: Heal2 GCD3: Heal2
GCD4: Heal4 GCD4: Heal4
GCD5: Heal3 GCD5: Heal3

Sooo... explain to me how the regen nerf will do anything but make me run out of mana faster?

This brings it to my point that encounters in 'Clysm, by this interpretation, will be about rDPS>healer mana pool.

A lot of healers are simply chaining their biggest heals because they have so much haste and so much mana that it doesn't matter. So their current rotation looks like:

GCD1: Big Heal
GCD2: Big Heal
GCD3: Big Heal
GCD4: Big Heal

And for nine out of ten fights, they're fine. Granted this is more true for tank healers than raid healers, raid healers usually throw in a group heal every five or six GCDs whenever it's off CD. Not all healers heal this way, the good one certainly don't, but huge mana pools and insane haste make it a workable tactic that Blizz is trying to get rid of.

[Pokchop]

So druids and shamans are able to double their healing gear as spell DPS. So not fair! :P And holy and disc priests finally won't be competing against locks, mages, and shadow priests.

Rejoice, no more stupid weapon skills

Yay!