Cataclysm Blue Posts, Comics

[Boubouille]

The cataclysm news will resume shortly, the recent announcements slowed down the news flow because ... well, a lot of super important stuff happened.

There is also a couple of things happening on MMO-Champion and it definitely takes some of my time, hopefully I will be able to give you an update on that pretty soon. A lot of people asked how I plan to react to the RealID thing, for the moment I will probably just add a couple of new forums to the site this week to give everyone a new home depending on how that RealID thing evolves.

And just because I hate posting a news only filled with blue posts, here are two screenshots of Cataclysm to help you wait and cheer you up.

Cataclysm Talent Blue Posts

Passive talents vs. Specialization bonus
We could add a passive bonus that says "You do +50% melee weapon damage and +25% Frost and Shadow damage." Why make you buy essentially that same bonus in 12 separate talents when you are almost certainly going to do it anyway (unless you're a very misinformed player)? The passive bonuses don't carry a lot of risk. Other talent specs can't go fishing for them and we don't have to worry that you skipped over them. (Source)

Healers running out of mana
It happened pretty regularly before this last expansion. We have even seen it happen on heroic Halion today.

Back in Molten Core raiding, healers installed mods to help them cancel heals. They did that to conserve mana. (Source)

Reasons behind the Mastery stat
Mostly because we wanted a new stat on gear. Currently there isn't much to compete with haste vs. crit, especially once things like mp5 and arpen are gone and non-healers won't want Spirit.

We also thought having a new stat would help make the Cataclysm gear seem more interesting instead of just bigger numbers from your current gear. We met a lot about it and finally decided the best way to introduce a new stat that everyone would want would be for it to do different things for every spec. (Source)

Fun talents are here to stay
Exactly. We didn't want anyone to worry that we were pulling fun talents like say Hot Streak or Borrowed Time. Some specs need a little more help in the rotation department and we weren't trying to say everything will play just as it does today. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Beacon of Light
Beacon is a good spell in our opinion.

Most of these arguments seem to be essentially that Beacon is the reason you can't have nice things. But that's a tuning issue, not a fundamental flaw with the spell. What you really seem to be saying is that paladins need more interesting mechanics going on when healing. I totally agree with that, but I don't think killing Beacon needs to be a part of it. (Source)

Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Holy Changes
Holy would lose or have significant changes made to the following talents: Searing Light, Holy Focus, Empowered Healing, Divine Accuracy, Improved Renew, Improved Healing, Healing Prayers, Holy Reach, Improved Holy Nova, Thriving Light and Divine Providence.
Good guesses. Honestly it was kind of fun pruning the talent trees for this overhaul because it was surprisingly easy to pick out the talents that had to go and often cathartic to delete them. One of the hardest decisions was deciding what to push up to the first couple of tiers and rectifying that with what you get at which level.

Empowered and Improved Healing are still around (in slightly altered form) but available to Disc. We kept Improved Holy Nova and might keep Improved Renew because we want Holy to be good at Renew. The others, unless I am mistaken, were destroyed in the Cataclysm. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Thunder Clap
We're still iterating on the Cataclysm design of Thunder Clap. It needs to fall into a space where it isn't monotonous to AE tank while still giving warriors the tools they need to do the job. (Source)

Casting revenge when not taking damage
4. A way to cast Revenge when not the taking damage - e.g. "when the player with Vigilance takes damage, there is now a 20% chance to allow the use of your Revenge ability" or something similar. One reason protection warr. dps is so much lower when not taking damage is because we lose Revenge, which has become our hardest hitting ability.
I think this is a valid point. (Source)

Comics
We all knew we'd see comics about this.

[allakaboom]

first!

[Marlamin]

Super important stuff

[Kronicle]

No... Blanchy... someone will PAY.

[omnibishop]

First picture... no glasses. Second picture, glasses.

Win.

[Babetina415]

Nooooooooo,they killed Blanchy!

[Futhark]

Insert your own Lt. Horatio Laine quote:

Stormwind Investigator: "Lt. Laine! ***SETUP LINE***"
Lt. Horatio Laine: "***IRONIC ANSWER: FIRST HALF*** ..."
/equip glasses
Lt. Horatio Laine: "... ***IRONIC ANSWER: SECOND HALF***"

YEEEAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Anaeth]

Horatio Laine seriously? even the glasses

[TheLude]

First picture... no glasses. Second picture, glasses.

Win.

Heratio Laine says: Looks like Old Blanchy..... /glasses....won't be getting any older....



YYYYYYYYYYYYEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

[Elysia]

Love the comic.

[Soum]

Oh my god.. LOLOLOL Got admit that Horation Laine made my day!

[MrPistachio]

Hah. Saw that questline from someone else and cracked up. Blizzard sure knows how to work in references.

[Vasz]

LOL, loving the horatio caine addition. CSI 4tw.

[Jonkheer]

why the hell would blizz kill old blanchy?!! why....

[Insanus]

im really sad that our dear ol' blanchy died...but with Horatio Laine in the case JUSTICE IS ASSURED!

[azrielen]

Oy. Always so little Paladin news. In all of the comments about the newest talent system/masteries/etc, Paladin abilities are barely ever mentioned. (Ret was, once or twice, but never Holy.)

*sigh*

*waits impatiently*

[salate]

No... Blanchy... someone will PAY.

NOOOOO!!! POOR OLD BLANCHY!!!!
SOMEONE EXACTLY!!!! WILL PAAY!


such a nice horse i wont play cata, they killed the cutest horse eva!
wtb revive!

[iProd]

Bum Tickley

[muindaur]

GU Comics did one on the feared downside of the new system. I feel kind of helpless on this change as it is truly looking more like the Blizzard devs are being forced into a corporate line by the big man at Activision.

[Hubbl3]

The CSI Miami thing is so fucking win!