World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Here are a few additional changes we are making which will be applied in patch 4.0.3a:

• These changes are all slated for patch 4.0.3a when the shattering of Azeroth takes place, and are not currently implemented on live realms. Some of them may be active in the beta test – the Savage Defense change for example was applied via a hotfix to the beta realms recently.
  
  

Death Knight (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Icebound Fortitude -- Damage reduction changed from 30% to 20% (or 60% to 50% talented). Cooldown still 2 minutes. Duration still 12 seconds.
  
  

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Savage Defense is massively overpowered on beta and has been dealt with accordingly. Many of the reports of beta raid bosses two-shotting tanks were because that was how much damage the bosses needed to do in order to challenge Feral tanks. With less damage absorbed, the boss damage can be adjusted downwards. We've reduced the multiplier for attack power on the absorption effect (from 65% to 35%, still modified by mastery) and it no longer procs from periodic critical hits.
  
  
• Bear Form -- Stamina bonus lowered from 20% to 10% and Heart of the Wild health bonus from 10% to 6%. Bear health should be close to plate tank health with this change.
  
  
• Survival Instincts -- Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Duration still 12 seconds.
  
  

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Holy Shield will be changed to increase block value by 10% (40% total) instead of increasing block chance by 15%. Since this will cause Mastery to become more valuable, the amount of block granted by Mastery will be reduced to 2.25% block chance per point of Mastery, down from 3%.
  
  
• Paladin tanks are not intended to go cap block as fast as they can. It’s fine if you want to do that, but we don’t treat it as “the new defense cap” and we don’t balance paladins assuming they have a 100% block chance. That is something the community identified as being not only possible, but likely, and one of the reasons we changed the way block works for paladins.
  
  
• Guardian of Ancient Kings -- Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown still 2 minutes (talented). Duration still 12 seconds.
  
  

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• At level 85, the value of Shield Block decreases as block value generated by Mastery increases. To remedy this, we will convert overflow of block + avoidance that exceeds 100% into critical block chance instead. Along with that change, Shield Block will be reduced to +25% block chance (down from +100%), but this will still yield a net buff for most warriors. Also in response to this change, the amount of block and critical block provided by Mastery will be equalized. Finally, Mastery will now grant 1.5% block chance per point.
  
  
• The new warrior Mastery is 1.5% block and 1.5% critical block per point of mastery.
  
  
• Shield Block will spill over into critical block if any portion of the 25% would have been wasted because your block + dodge + parry is so high already. If you are somehow always over 100% (which will be pretty hard now), you only get the critical block when Shield Block is up. The intent is to make sure Shield Block isn't wasted, not to make sure you have mastery coming out your ears (or any other orifice in the facial region).
  
  
• Shield Block is not intended to be a magic damage cooldown (neither is Blood Shield, which also is physical damage only). We don’t want to duplicate the exact same ability on every tank when we can avoid it. Bosses generally don’t spam out a lot of magic damage on short cooldowns. On the other hand, Shield Block has a much higher up-time than Barkskin. We still believe the Cataclysm raiding environment is going to be a lot less centered around tanks dying to spike damage than players currently experience at level 80. Mitigating a lot of damage to save healer mana can be very valuable in Cataclysm.
  
  
• Vigilance -- No longer reduces damage by 3%, but will still reset Taunt cooldown and provide Vengeance for the warrior.
  
  
• Glyph of Shield Wall -- Now buffs damage reduction by 10% (to 60%), but only adds 1 minute of cooldown.
  
  
• Shield Wall -- Damage reduction changed from 40% to 50%. Cooldown still 2 minutes (talented). Duration still 12 seconds.
  
  

Raid Heroic Mode
You will have to complete the Normal mode of a raid dungeon once before you can switch to Heroic the next week. (Source)

Beta Raid Difficuly
Normal mode raids are currently too easy (with few exceptions). You'll likely be seeing substantial buffs across the board in the next beta patch. (Source)

Removal of the Zul'gurub instance in 4.0.3a
We feel Zul'Gurub will serve the updated old world much better as a new questing area (and potentially a space for future dungeons), rather than an irrelevant instance. We understand there are some cool flavor items there, but that alone just wasn't justification enough to keep the place walled off so a very tiny fraction of the playerbase can continue farming endlessly for these items. One day maybe these items will make their return when the timing and implementation feels right. (Source)

Is it possible to increase the droprate of ZG mounts before it's removed?
No. (Source)

Tanking
Dragons damage / Magic Tanking
If Deathwing is anything like our current dragons, he'll do 60% physical damage and 40% magical damage. Dragon breaths never take you down to 100% of your health, so if the tank dies during them, it's probably because she wasn't topped off before hand (from all the physical damage before hand).

We got rid of the magical tank niche early in LK development because it wasn't a strong enough niche and it wasn't fun for groups to have to swap MTs. All four tanks are tanking Lich King and all four tanks will be tanking Deathwing. (Source)

RNG Deaths in WotLK
I agree it worked that way in Lich King. Tanks were often at risk of dying within 2-3 boss hits, often faster than a heal could land. In that environment anything that can prolong your life at all is very valuable, and by extension anything not related to reliably prolonging your life (parry for instance) is not attractive.

This is also something we have set out to change. I understand that you personally don't believe we will change it, and since your vision of what the world will be like is at odds with our vision, it is unsurprising that the changes we make to bring about our vision might not make sense to you.

But if healer mana doesn't matter, our whole combat design collapses. Healers won't value cheap heals. Since mana won't constrain them, overhealing will be common, so they may start devaluing crit as well. DPS specs won't value talents that help them stay alive. And the only way to challenge raids will once again be to clobber tanks so hard that any missed heals will result in tank death. It doesn't have to be this way, and in fact it wasn't this way for much of the game. We were watching the new Nefarian fights and recalling the old Nefarian fights where, in the absence of a berserk timer, the fight could really last for a long time -- maybe 20 minutes or more -- if you had a lot of deaths. The tank wasn't in much danger of RNG dying, so as long as the healers didn't run out of mana, the raid could keep the fight going nearly indefinitely.

As we said above, in the beta raid tests, druids were easy to keep alive and the other tanks were dying in two hits. That wasn't the design we were going for, so we brought the druid down to the other tank levels and adjusted the damage accordingly. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Vengeance and Savage Defense
Vengeance isn't a problem with Savage Defense in our minds. In fact, it works out well because it lets Savage Defense roughly scale the same way blocking scales, rather than being overpowered for 5-player dungeons or underpowered in raids. When you're getting hit the hardest (hard enough to stack Vengeance a lot), you're also blocking a lot.

Savage Defense was just mitigating too much damage in raids though, which is why we have nerfed it. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Shield Block
When those scary moments come, you use Shield Wall. Or Last Stand. Or both. They are often telegraphed far in advance, so you can also get Guardian Spirit and all the other healer cooldowns lined up as well. You don't need Shield Block to withstand those big magical hits, in the same way you didn't need it to survive Fusion Punch. That's not what it's for. It is for reducing damage taken over time so that healers expend less mana over the course of the fight and don't run out. Very few bosses hit for only magical damage, so in that sense Shield Block and block and armor for that matter are what allow your healers to make it through an encounter.

We could consider adding a Shield Block glyph in the future that removes the block but adds magic damage reduction instead, but overall I think you guys are way over-freaking out about this. (Source)

Due to an error in our shipping process, BlizzCon items ordered during the pre-sale have been delayed by approximately two weeks. We're expecting all items to now be shipped by November 3.

The intent of the pre-sale is of course to allow you to buy your items ahead of time, and get them as close to BlizzCon as possible, if not before. These issues, while unforeseen, are entirely regrettable and we apologize for any inconvenience they've caused. We're working to get you your goodies as soon as we possibly can.

Thank you for your patience.

As the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm draws near, we continue to fine-tune various class abilities. Based on feedback and our own testing, we're in the process of assessing and amending tanking cooldowns -- at level 85 in particular. Some of these abilities, like druid Savage Defense and death knight self healing, are particularly difficult to model, so further testing will be necessary before there is sufficient information to base adjustments on.

In the case of paladins and warriors, we have recognized that it is possible for block chance to get too high too quickly and cause a situation where stacked mastery and the warrior Shield Block ability behave strangely. Since that's a scenario we want to avoid, we're making some changes regarding how block chance is handled for each of these classes:

Paladins - Holy Shield will be changed to increase block value by 10% (40% total) instead of increasing block chance by 15%. Since this will cause Mastery to become more valuable, the amount of block granted by Mastery will be reduced to 2.25% block chance per point of Mastery, down from 3%.

Warriors - At level 85, the value of Shield Block decreases as block value generated by Mastery increases. To remedy this, we will convert overflow of block + avoidance that exceeds 100% into critical block chance instead. Along with that change, Shield Block will be reduced to +25% block chance (down from +100%), but this will still yield a net buff for most warriors. Also in response to this change, the amount of block and critical block provided by Mastery will be equalized. Finally, Mastery will now grant 1.5% block chance per point.

Update - Here are some additional details based on the questions and feedback we're seeing:

• The new warrior Mastery is 1.5% block and 1.5% critical block per point of mastery.
  
  
• Shield Block will spill over into critical block if any portion of the 25% would have been wasted because your block + dodge + parry is so high already. If you are somehow always over 100% (which will be pretty hard now), you only get the critical block when Shield Block is up. The intent is to make sure Shield Block isn't wasted, not to make sure you have mastery coming out your ears (or any other orifice in the facial region).
  
  
• Shield Block is not intended to be a magic damage cooldown (neither is Blood Shield, which also is physical damage only). We don’t want to duplicate the exact same ability on every tank when we can avoid it. Bosses generally don’t spam out a lot of magic damage on short cooldowns. On the other hand, Shield Block has a much higher up-time than Barkskin. We still believe the Cataclysm raiding environment is going to be a lot less centered around tanks dying to spike damage than players currently experience at level 80. Mitigating a lot of damage to save healer mana can be very valuable in Cataclysm.
  
  
• Savage Defense is massively overpowered on beta and has been dealt with accordingly. Many of the reports of beta raid bosses two-shotting tanks were because that was how much damage the bosses needed to do in order to challenge Feral tanks. With less damage absorbed, the boss damage can be adjusted downwards. We've reduced the multiplier for attack power on the absorption effect (from 65% to 35%, still modified by mastery) and it no longer procs from periodic critical hits.
  
  
• Paladin tanks are not intended to go cap block as fast as they can. It’s fine if you want to do that, but we don’t treat it as “the new defense cap” and we don’t balance paladins assuming they have a 100% block chance. That is something the community identified as being not only possible, but likely, and one of the reasons we changed the way block works for paladins.
  
  
• These changes are all slated for patch 4.0.3a when the shattering of Azeroth takes place, and are not currently implemented on live realms. Some of them may be active in the beta test – the Savage Defense change for example was applied via a hotfix to the beta realms recently.
  

Q. In what regions is the Cataclysm pre-sale available? What day/time is Cataclysm launching in my region?
A. The pre-sale is available in the following regions, with realms scheduled to launch at the following times:

Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia - December 7 at 12:01 a.m. PST Europe and Russia - December 7 at 12:01 a.m. CET

Q. When will my credit card (or other payment method) be charged?
A. You will be charged on the day that you place your pre-order for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

Q. Why do I need to log in to the game once after I’ve upgraded?
A. The first time you log in after pre-ordering, your account will become eligible to begin receiving the Cataclysm data when it’s available. The data will automatically download in the background while you play World of Warcraft or while you have the Launcher window open.

Q. Can I pre-order a physical copy of Cataclysm and have it shipped?
A. Not from Blizzard Entertainment, but many retailers offer pre-orders of physical boxes and Collector’s Editions.

Q. Will a digital version of the Collector's Edition, with the exclusive pet, be available?
A. No. The World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Collector's Edition is exclusive to physical retail copies. The digital version consists of the standard edition.

Even though we have a set December 7 release date for Cataclysm, we still want to avoid giving out specific dates for upcoming events and patches in the event we need to shift our scheduling around at all to meet production needs.

I'll try my best here to give you useful information without it feeling like a non-answer. :)

Be patient! If you're really hoping to roll brand new characters once the shattering of Azeroth takes place, I'd strongly recommend just waiting. You'll get a sense soon enough for how events will unfold from now until December 7. I suggest you stick to your main characters for now. Very soon the pre-Cataclysm events will begin and they'll continually ramp up in severity and things to do over time, leading up to the shattering (patch 4.0.3a). You're going to want to participate in these events, as they'll only be around for a short time and will not return once Deathwing is unleashed.

[...] One thing we'll be clarifying a bit better next week is the distinction between what is in patch 4.0.3 versus when the shattering takes place.

Patch 4.0.3 will implement virtually all of the content necessary to make the changes to Azeroth, but those changes will actually take place in patch 4.0.3a, which is scheduled to be released shortly after patch 4.0.3.

Due to recalibrating expertise for Cataclysm, level 80-83 creatures (which includes bosses) dodge and parry less, so you need less expertise, 23, to be exact. Sorry we didn't announce this. I would classify it as an unintended consequence (though not unknown) and not a desired change on our part.

At level 85, you will need 26 again.

Current class balance
At 85 on the current beta build, Fury is high. Ret, Feral and the DKs are either close or slightly high. Rogues and Enhance might be a little low. This is how things look this AM and after a few more raid tests and balance tweaks, we might feel differently.

We know not everyone is able to beta raid test, but it is very useful to compare our internal tests and estimations to what players are actually able to accomplish. (Source)

Unique Buffs
Nobody brings unique buffs anymore. It isn't a tenable design when you have 30 different specs and raid groups that are sized 10 and 25 to have 30 very valuable unique buffs. I further question how fun it is to know that you probably only got brought because you make everyone else functional.

[...] A raid leader should bring you because you perform well, contribute to guild progression and are a pleasant person to play with. If your dps is dreadfully low, then it's understandable if a progression-focused leader feels like he or she can't afford a spot for you. The only PvE specs we felt were dreadfully low in the previous expansion were Arms warrior, Frost mage, Subtlety rogue and BM hunter. If we can fix those for Cataclysm then we'll be in pretty good shape and the onus will be on you to be a capable enough raider that folks want to raid with you. (Source)

Insane of the Membrane breaking in 4.0.3
Most of those changes are specific to when the world actually changes (mounts, feats, quests, etc). That's technically patch 4.0.3a. We'll have more information on the distinctions between patches 4.0.3 and 4.0.3a to announce next week. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Shield of the Righteous changes in latest build
We changed Shield Slam and Shield of the Righteous to do more base damage and scale less with AP. This was to fix a problem where numbers became absurdly large with a lot of AP, especially under the effects of Vengeance, dwarfing the damage done by druid or DK tanks. With these changes, a tank in heroic dungeon blues should deal the same damage with no Vengeance, but Vengeance will have less of an impact.

The coefficient for Shield of the Righteous was lowered from 120% to 60% at 3 Holy Power. The coefficient for Shield Slam was lowered from 75% to 60%. (Source)

Word of Glory
We buffed Word of Glory base points for Holy paladins. We nerfed the Ret and Prot talents to keep it about the same for them. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Vanish Bug
The only live Vanish bug we know of had to do with pets and guardians still being able to target you. We have fixed that on our end. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Enhancement
We are seeing Enhancement at about the same dps they were at before at level 80, and are competitive with e.g. Fury warriors, Ret paladins and Unholy DKs at 85 as far as PvE dps goes. As always, it depends a lot on the encounter and the individual behind the keyboard.

If you find that is not the case for you, let us know, but it would be helpful to provide something more than anecdotal information.

[...] From a quick glimpse at some of these parses, the priority of abilities seems fine but the numbers are lower than some of the other ones we've seen. That suggests it could be a gear issue. Mastery is pretty good for Enhancement shaman, and some chose to reforge and regem for it. I didn't go inspect all of you to know if you tried that or not.

We'll keep looking into the issue though.

I am looking at an Al'Akir parse right at this moment with an Enh shaman tied with Frost DKs, Fury and Ret. (Source)

Enhancement and Lava Burst
We don't intended for Enhance to use Lava Burst rotationally. If you hard cast a Lava Burst when you're out of range, no problem. The value of Lava Burst to score a crit will also go down as your natural crit rate rises (at 85; I assume your crit rate is probably pretty high at 80). (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Shield Slam changes in latest build
We changed Shield Slam and Shield of the Righteous to do more base damage and scale less with AP. This was to fix a problem where numbers became absurdly large with a lot of AP, especially under the effects of Vengeance, dwarfing the damage done by druid or DK tanks. With these changes, a tank in heroic dungeon blues should deal the same damage with no Vengeance, but Vengeance will have less of an impact.

The coefficient for Shield of the Righteous was lowered from 120% to 60% at 3 Holy Power. The coefficient for Shield Slam was lowered from 75% to 60%. (Source)

Once servers are up and after the Tol Barad test we'll be opening up Nefarian, the final encounter of Blackwing Descent.

Start your engines!

Guild Achievements

• Heroic: Deadmines Guild Run now properly requires you to defeat Vanessa VanCleef.

General

• Dual Talent Specialization level requirement has been reduced to 30, down from 40.
• To All the Squirrels Who Cared for Me - The Cataclysm has brought more critters to Azeroth. You must /love them too.

Quests

• Glutton for Punishment is gone and has been replaced by 3 achievements.
• Glutton for Fiery Punishment - In Archmage Xylem's Trial of Fire in Azshara, gain 10 stacks of Fire Dancing without taking damage.
• Glutton for Icy Punishment - In Archmage Xylem's Trial of Frost in Azshara, gain 20 stacks of Essence of Ice without taking damage.
• Glutton for Shadowy Punishment - In Archmage Xylem's Trial of Shadow in Azshara, trap 20 Weeping Souls without taking damage.

Racial

• Magic Resistance (Blood Elf) no longer reduces your chance to be hit by spells, increases your resistance to Arcane instead.
• Shadow Resistance (Draenei) no longer reduces your chance to be hit by Shadow spells, increases your resistance to Shadow instead.
• Frost Resistance (Dwarf) no longer reduces your chance to be hit by Frost spells, increases your resistance to Frost instead.
• Explorer (Dwarf) no longer increases your Archaeology skills, now allows you to find additional fragments when looting archaeological finds. Still allows you to survey faster.
• Aberration (Worgen) no longer reduces the duration of all Curses and Diseases used against you. Now increases your resistance to Nature and Shadow effects.

Archaeology

• Survey now has a 5 sec cooldown, up from 4 sec.

Death Knight (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Unholy

• Unholy Might now increases your Strength by 10%, down from 15%.

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Balance

• Soothe now has a 1.5 sec cast time, up from Instant.

Feral

• Thrash (Bear) now deals 15% of AP + 243 damage, down from 19% of AP + 304 damage. Bleed effect reduced from 3% of AP + 189 to 3% of AP + 152.
• Swipe now deals 171 base damage, down from 214.
• Brutal Impact now causes victims of Skull Bash to have a 5/10% increased mana cost on their spells, down from 15/30%.
• Stampede now increase melee haste by 30%, up from 15%. Causes Feral Charge (Cat) to cost 100% less energy, down from 50%.

Restoration

• Rebirth now has a 10 min cooldown, down from 30 min.
• Swift Rejuvenation is now a 1-Rank talent, down from 2 Ranks. Now reduces the GCD of Rejuvenation by 0.5 sec.
• Efflorescence now heals nearby targets for 20/40/60% of the amount healed by Swiftmend over 7 sec, down from 7.5 sec.
• Natural Shapeshifter now also increases the duration of Tree of Life by 5/10 sec.

Hunter (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Beast Mastery

• Widow Venom now reduces healing by 10%, down from 25%.
• Kill Command now deals 43% of Ranged AP + 848 damage. Up from 35% of RAP + 772 damage.

Marksmanship

• Steady Shot now scales from 2.1% of Ranged AP, down from 10 of Ranged AP.
• Chimera Shot now deals 28.8% of Ranged AP + 973 damage. Up from 24% of Ranged AP + 401.

Survival

• Explosive Shot now scales from 22% of Ranged Attack Power, up from 18%.
• Black Arrow doesn't seem to scale from Ranged Attack Power anymore, or maybe Blizzard just removed the scaling value from the tooltip.

Pets

• Demoralizing Screech (Carrion Bird) no longer deals damage or reduces the attack power of enemies in range. Now reduces the physical damage caused by all enemies within 8 yards by 10% for 10 sec. No longer has a focus cost.
• Froststorm Breath base damage reduced from 244 to 41.
• Monstrous Bite now reduces healing by 10%, down from 25%.
• Burrow Attack now scales from 76.8% of Ranged AP and deals 1432 damage, up from 9.6% RAP + 257.

Mage (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Fire

• Molten Shields now causes your Blazing Speed effect to also removes any movement slowing effects.
• Blazing Speed now dispells all effect that prevent movement.

Frost

• Permafrost now reduces the target's healing by 3/7/10%, down from 8/16/25%.

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Holy

• Holy Radiance's effectiveness now diminish on targets farther than x yards away.
• Divine Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 8538-9512 to 11100-12366
• Holy Wrath now scales from 61% of SpellPower, up from 30%. Base damage reduced by 22%, from 3122 to 2435.
• Exorcism now scales from 34.4% of SpellPower or AP, up from 15%. Base damage increased by 15% from 2343 to 2741.
• Flash of Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 5313-5961 to 6907-7750.
• Lay on Hands no longer restores mana.
• Holy Light base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3202-3567 to 4162-4637.
• Beacon of Light now lasts 5 min, up from 1 min.
• Mastery: Illuminated Healing now absorbs 10% of the amount healed, up from 8%. Now lasts 8 sec, up from 6 sec. Each point of mastery increases the absorb amount by an additional 1.25%, up from 1%.
• Holy Shock base healing has been increased by 30%. From 3033-3285 to 3943-4271.

Retribution

• Templar's Verdict now deals 235% weapon damage with 3 Holy Power, up from 225%.
• Hammer of Wrath base damage has been reduced by 22%. From 4890-5404 to 3814-4215.
• Seal of Truth now scales from 12.85% of Attack Power and Spell Power (up from 12.5%) but now deals 15% weapon damage when stacked 5 times. Down from 16%.
• Crusader Strike now deals 115% weapon damage, down from 150%.

Protection

• Avenger's Shield now has a 15 sec cooldown, down from 24 sec.
• Shield of the Righteous now deals 609/1828/3656 damage depending on Holy Power. (Old - Deals 20%/60%/120% of Attack Power as damage)
• Shield of the Templar no longer reduces the cooldown of Avenger's Shield. Now allows your Divine Plea to generate 1/2/3 Holy Power.
• Guarded by the Light now increases Word of Glory by 15/30%, down from 30/60%.
• Wrath of the Lightbringer now increases the damage of Crusader Strike by 50% at Rank 1, up from 30%. (Not sure if the plan is to make it a single rank, or a 2 Ranks 50/100%, seems bugged)

Priest (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Discipline

• Inner Fire now increases Spell Power by 531, up from 425.

Holy

• Holy Nova affects target within 10 yards. (Tooltip fix)
• Binding Heal base healing increased by 20%. From 3295-4237 to 3959-5091. Now costs 28% of base mana, down from 29%.
• Prayer of Healing now costs 26% of base mana, down from 36% of base mana.
• State of Mind no longer affects Renew, affects Prayer of Mending instead.
• Chakra no longer works with Renew. No longer costs mana. Sanctuary (Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending) now increases healing done by your AoE spells and Renew by 15%. (Old - Only increased AoE spells by 10%)
• Revelations now has a 40 sec cooldown.
• Rapid Renewal (Tier 4) *New* - Reduces the global cooldown of your Renew by 0.5 sec.
• Tome of Light is now a Tier 3 talent, down from Tier 4.

Shadow

• Vampiric Embrace now heals you for 6%, down from 15%.
• Improved Mind Blast now reduces healing by 10%, down from 25%.

Rogue (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Asssassination

• Mastery: Potent Poisons now increases damage done by your poisons by 28%, up from 20%. Each point of Mastery increases damage by an additional 3.5%, up from 2.5%

Combat

• Mastery: Main Gauche now has a 16% chance to grant an extra off hand attack, up from 10%. Each point of Mastery increases the chance by an additional 2%, up from 1.25%.

Subtlety

• Mastery: Executioner now also increases the effectiveness of Slice and Dice and Recuperate.

Shaman (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Restoration

• Chain Heal now costs 20% of base mana, up from 17% of base mana.

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Affliction

• Drain Life now costs 12% of base mana, down from 17% of base mana.

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Arms

• Mortal Strike now reduces healing by 10%, down from 25%.

Fury

• Furious Attacks now reduces healing by 10%, down from 25%.
• Slam now costs 15 rage, down from 20.

Protection

• Shield Slam base damage has been increased by 125%. From 826-868 to 1871-1967.