World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Cloth Itemization in Cataclysm
Yes. If it has +hit on it, it might be attractive to a mage, lock or Shadow priest. If it has +Spirit on it, it will be more attractive to healing priests. If it has neither stat on it, then it might be attractive to any cloth wearer. (Source)

Spirit in Cataclysm
You'll need enough Spirit to have good regen. That probably doesn't mean you're going to pass on every item without Spirit.

Spirit is a weird stat that is technically primary but has more in common with stats like crit and haste. What I mean is that if you found an item without Intellect, you'd almost certainly pass on it because that likely means the item has Agi or Strength instead. But if you find an item with Int but no Spirit, it might be a good upgrade. (Source)

Increasing the crit rating on plate to compensate the crit given by agi
Warriors don't need to have the same amount of crit as rogues to do the same (or sometimes higher) damage. The only risk is that rogues who scale both AP and crit from Agi will end up doing higher damage with extreme gear levels, but usually we have the opposite problem. In any case, at extreme gear levels crit often becomes less and less valuable.

We balance warriors around wearing plate. When they can then wear leather and do higher damage (and who can blame them for making choices that maximize their dps?), that presents a problem and the solution is often to nerf warrior damage, which then hurts the guys actually wearing plate. We need to finally fix this design flaw, which we're doing in two ways: itemizing leather the way we itemize plate (i.e. just Agi rather than Agi and AP) and giving warriors more of a benefit for wearing plate. (Source)

Nerfing Mortal Strike debuffs
Yeah I don't think we could nerf MS on live without also nerfing healing, which obviously makes it more than just a quick fix. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Holy Paladins can't equip Daggers
Well, it's more complicated than that of course. You aren't competing with priests and druids for your shields and nothing is stopping you from equipping a spell sword if you don't need the Spirit. A caster axe isn't off the table, but it would be pretty uncommon. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Dual Wield Talent
We're not quite ready to talk about it yet, but imagine that the DW talent is accesible to Enhance early enough to be useful but not to Elemental and Resto. We're also looking at making enchants unique, which would let us drop the WF internal cooldown low enough that fast weapons might be more attractive. (Source)

Level 85 Heirlooms (Source)
Note that there will be level 85 heirlooms that will not stop working at 80. However, you'll have to get at least one character to 85 to purchase them.

What incentive, aside from a short leveling burst, will there be to get 1-85 heirlooms?
There may not be a ton of incentive if you have a full wardrobe of heirlooms already. We will be making new kinds of heirlooms though, including some new slots. Many players also reach a point where they can't find anything else to spend badges on, so heirlooms look more attractive then. (Source)

If they are only 80-85, they will be very unlikely to get used by anyone, unless they hit the "point cap" for the points used to purchase them and they have a raid to go to.
They will be 1-85.

Wrath of the Lich King Heirlooms
The experience bonus will stop working. It's also possible they will no longer grow in stats above level 80, but you can probably still equip them. (Source)

Pre-85 Class balance in Cataclysm
We're not super worried about class balance below 85 once Cataclysm ships. There will be a short period where things might feel really chaotic as everyone (including us) gets used to new mechanics, talent trees and stat allocation. Losing any current spells is just going to be the tip of that iceberg. Fortunately, we don't think classes need to be balanced on a razor's edge for that period. Any gear you score in that window probably won't last very long once you start leveling again. (Source)

Armor downgrading in Cataclysm
You will get a stat bonus of some kind if you wear "your" armor. You can still wear cloth, mail or leather of a lower armor type if it's a big upgrade, especially if it would get sharded anyway. But the days of Holy paladins in cloth or warrior wearing leather are probably behind us. (Source)

1-Handed weapons in Cataclysm (Source)
There will be Strength, Agi and Int one-handers in Cataclysm.

I was more asking if we will have any strength one handers in 4.0 before Cataclysm hits.
There will be that strange and wonderful period in between changing over the classes but before the world changes. That is always an interesting time, but balance will have to be adjusted in so many different ways that we're not too worried about what will happen if Str one-handers do or don't exist. You'll probably replace any level 80 items long before balance really matters again. (Source)

Will there still be tank weapons since Defense as a stat is going away?
We will still make weapons with Stamina and perhaps hit on them. They may not be as valuable as tanking weapons are today without defense, but that's probably not a bad thing. We won't make a ton of them in any case since half the tank classes don't want them. (Source)

Will there be int one handers with spirit on them? I like swords.
There will be healer weapons, but those are unlikely to be swords since 3 healing classes can't use them. Mages and locks will have no need for Spirit.

Currently holy paladins have the option of wielding a caster mace or sword. Why don't they itemize a 2handed healing mace (usable by everyone except priests) or allow them to wield 1 handed daggers?
The intent is that Holy paladins use a mace and shield to heal. There may be occasional more unusual weapons -- we made a spellpower fist in Naxxramas for instance.

Loot design
There's a bit of art to the design. On one extreme, you make weapons for each unique spec -- Frost and Fire mages might want different weapons. On the other extreme, you make say 4 types of weapons (as we often do with trinkets) and make them usable by lots of characters. It comes down to there being a sweet spot to loot design (and I don't pretend we always nail it), where you can be lucky or unlucky or you can want an item for which there is lots of competition or an item which nobody else but you really wants. If loot is too predictable then it gets boring and if it's too random then it gets frustrating. (Source)

Are daggers the only fast weapons in Cataclysm?
That's something we have discussed (only fast daggers), but the valuation of weapon speed is heavily tied into combat mechanics and those might still change. For example, we've been considering that nasty ICD on Windfury weapon again.... (Source)

Weapon Speed
There are definitely times we talk about just doing away with weapon speed. We ultimately don't want to though because we have precious few ways to make one item distinct from another as it is. We're cool if there is a certain weapon speed that you really want because that can mean certain items are particularly desired. It's only a problem when a 0.1 change in weapon speed can trump an entire tier of extra stats, which can definitely happen. (Source)

Hunter (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Trap Launcher
Trap Launcher is replacing Freezing Arrow. The functionality is so similar that there is little reason to have both. (Source)

Spells training level
The levels at which you get certain spells are changing, in some cases dramatically. At the moment our design is that Trap Launcher is introduced at lower levels than 80-85. (Source)

Proto-Drake and Rare Mounts in Cataclysm
This is all tentative and could change, but we don't really have a problem with protodrake farming. What we will probably do with really unusual mounts like Mimiron's Head and Invincible is make them a rare drop. The 100% drop rate won't make sense when you can overpower the content.

If you want to overpower the content for a drake though, go for it. Players who did it "legit" had the benefit of having the achievement and mount earlier than anyone else. The most prestigious mounts will change in Cataclysm. (Source)

Exploration and Quest achievements in Cataclysm
The exploration and quest achievements probably won't change. If you have the achievements, you won't lose them. If you don't have them, you can still get them, but obviously you'll have different quests or areas to explore. The greatest risk is to players who are almost done with one of these achievements, because they might suddenly have to do more than they thought (say 100 quests instead of 50). (Source)

Molten Core/Blackwing Lair/Thunderfury in Cataclysm
We aren't removing MC or BWL as of this writing. We aren't going out of our way to remove old legendaries. The only risk there in a case like Thunderfury is if we change a zone like Silithus so much that the quests become hard to keep intact. (Source)

"What a Long Strange Trip It's Been"
You can still get "What a Long Strange Trip It's Been." In general, we are going to go bend over backwards to not remove existing achievements. (Source)

New classes/races and quest rewards
Yes. We are also making sure we include quest rewards for new classes, such as hunter weapons in the human zones and healing mail accessible to low level tauren paladins. (Source)

"If there is a quest item you really love, you might want to grab it now."
Almost every quest reward in the 1-60 content will be changing. If there is a quest item you really love, you might want to grab it now. (Source)

ICC Buff and instance nerfs
We're not worried about this issue. If players understand the concept of a stacking buff then they will understand that going into new content without the buff will be challenging, but that the buff will eventually get them back up to allow them to complete the content.

We essentially always had the equivalent of the ICC buff -- we'd just nerf content overtime to make it more accessible to a broader swath of players. The difference is that the ICC style of buff formalizes the concept -- a player whose raid can't beat Putricide at 5% can look forward to the 15% buff.

We also don't know that we'll use the ICC system every time. (Source)

Too many abilities in WoW?
I think this is valid and we're taking a pretty hard look at what abilities every class and talent spec has to deal with. I'm not sure WoW would benefit from a hard cap on the number of abilities you can put on your bar at one time, but we can combine or remove abilities with very situational use. (Source)

Is Dungeon Finder killing the community?
I think this is a legit issue and I definitely miss a little bit of the community feel my server(s) used to have. On the other hand, I'm not sure that's a good justification for long queues. Dungeon Finder can feel a little anonymous at times, but it beats the pants out of not being able to run dungeons at all. (Source)

Inspection Throttle / Gearscore
It's important to understand that this wasn't really the fault of addon authors. This needed to be fixed because we were allowing something we really shouldn't have. Many addons pull Inspect data when mousing over characters and there was nothing on our end to throttle the rate at which that data could be pulled. So if you're standing in Dalaran with one of these mods and slide your mouse across the screen and over several characters within a very small amount of time, your client is spamming the database with Inspect queries. We're correcting that issue on our end.

[...] We're starting by capping the number of Inspects that can be sent in a 10-second time frame. It'll likely be 5 Inspects, but that could change in either direction.

Keep in mind that this change is intended to help those using addons which are sending a lot of these requests from lagging or disconnecting. If you're not actually using such addons, and therefore not sending a large number of queries to our database, the change won't affect you either way. You're not lagging or disconnecting because someone else in a raid or major city is unknowingly spamming such requests. (Source)

[...] I just wanted to reiterate that the original information on this change was meant to help add-on authors more than anything so that they could adjust accordingly. Unless the add-ons you use are requesting a lot of data, there isn't going to be any particular change in regard to the amount of latency you might be experiencing in the game. (Source)