Misc Future WoW stuff

[Vast]

-They are looking into extending the dungeon finder to 10-man content.
-Chilton hinted that we may see a new boss in the Ruby Sanctum before Cataclysm launches
-They have a "general philosophical approach of getting the hybrids to where they're close to the DPS classes when it comes to DPS roles. Otherwise, those specs just turn into joke specs."
-They feel warlocks could use a boost to their DPS.
-Tol Barad, the Cataclysm equivalent to Wintergrasp, will be more of a Isle of Quel'Danas style daily quest hub instead of a farming zone.
-Before settling on death knights for Wrath of the Lich King's hero class, they specifically debated necromancers and rune-masters.
-They feel that with all the accessibility work they did on end game PvE in Wrath, end game PvP has become harder to get into by comparison.

[Vast]

As many of you know from panels at last year’s BlizzCon and posts here on the forums since then, Cataclysm will bring about major changes to familiar character stats such as Intellect, Armor Penetration, Defense, and others, ultimately designed to make the effects of stats more easily understandable and make gear choices more interesting. As these changes will have a significant impact on how stats work and relate to one another, today we wanted to offer you a closer look at exactly what’s in store and explain some of the rationale before Cataclysm arrives.

The most obvious question these changes raise is "Why are stats being changed, and why now?" As the game has matured, we've run into increasingly complex issues with the current stat system. Many stats are inherently confusing, and the way they interrelate can feel convoluted. Attack Power, for example, currently translates to damage, but so does Armor Penetration. Defense provides five different statistical benefits of varying utility. Mana regeneration involves understanding multiple stats and rules and often ends up being irrelevant anyway. In addition, the difference between a "good stat" for a class and a "bad stat" can be extreme. Some casters want Haste but not Crit; hunters want Armor Penetration but not Haste. There are other overarching issues, as well, such as Intellect not being very exciting for casters despite it being a core stat -- and these are just a few examples.

Our ultimate goal is make gear a more interesting (and less confusing) choice by making each stat valuable to more players. While the reasoning behind some of the following changes may be clear, we understand that you may have questions about some of the less obvious alterations, and we'll do our best to answer any questions you may have here on the forums.


What You’ll See on Gear

Stamina - Because of the way we will be assigning Strength, Agility, and Intellect, non-plate wearers will end up with more Stamina than before. Health pools will be much closer between plate-wearers and other classes.

Spirit - Come Cataclysm, this stat should only be found on healing gear. Non-healing casters will have other systems in place to regenerate mana, and we are designing special solutions for Elemental shaman and Balance druids who often share gear with healers (more on this below). Raid buffs that currently boost Spirit (such as Blessing of Kings) will only boost the primary stats of Stamina, Strength, Agility, and Intellect. We are also likely changing the five-second rule and other quirks of the current regen system.

Intellect - Intellect will now grant Spell Power (more on this below). Intellect will also provide less mana than it currently does.

Haste - Haste will become more attractive for melee classes by allowing them to recover resources such as energy and runes more quickly. Our intention is for Haste to let you "do stuff" more often.

Block Rating - Block is being redesigned to scale better. Blocked attacks will simply hit for 30% less damage. Block rating will improve your chance to block, though overall block chances will be lower than they are today.

Parry - Parry no longer provides 100% avoidance and no longer speeds up attacks. Instead, when you parry an attack, it and the next attack will each hit for 50% damage (assuming they hit at all). In other words, Dodge is a chance to avoid 100% of the damage from one attack, Parry is a chance to avoid 50% of the damage from two attacks, and Block is a chance to avoid 30% of the damage from one attack.

Mastery - This is a new stat that will allow players to become better at whatever makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. It's directly tied to talents, so what you gain from improving this stat is entirely dependent upon your class and the talent specialization you choose. We’ll talk more about specific Mastery benefits in the future.

Armor - The way Armor mitigates damage is not changing, but the Armor stat has been rebalanced to mirror changes to the armor curve in Cataclysm. As a result, bonus Armor will go down slightly overall. We are also changing the mitigation difference among armor types so that plate doesn’t offer so much more protection than mail, leather, and cloth.

Resilience - This will only affect damage done by players and critical damage done by players. It will not impact crit chance, mana drains, or other such effects.

Strength, Agility, Hit Rating, Expertise, and Critical Strike Rating - These will all still appear on gear as well. Aside from situations mentioned elsewhere in this list, in general these will function similarly to how they do now, though the details -- such as how much Hit Rating you might need to effectively combat high-level creatures (more on this below) -- are likely to change.


Being Removed from Items

Attack Power - This stat will no longer be present on most items as a flat value, though it will still show up on some process. Strength and Agility, which will be present on items, will grant the appropriate amount of Attack Power (generally 2 Attack Power per point of Strength or Agility) depending upon which stat a particular class favors. Agility may provide less Crit than it currently does.

Spell Power - Spell Power is another stat that you'll no longer see present on most items. Instead, as mentioned above, Intellect will grant Spell Power. One exception is that caster weapons will still have Spell Power. This allows us to make weapons proportionately more powerful for casters in the same way they are for melee classes.

Armor Penetration - This stat will no longer be present on items. Armor Penetration will still exist in talents and abilities.

Shield Block Value - This stat will no longer be present on items, since the amount blocked is always proportional to the amount of damage done. Talents and other effects might still modify the damage-reduction percentage from 30%, however.


Going Away Completely

MP5 - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Holy paladins and Restoration shaman will be redesigned to benefit from Spirit.

Defense - Defense is being removed from the game entirely. Tanking classes should expect to become uncrittable versus creatures just by shifting into Defensive Stance, Frost Presence, Bear Form, or by using Righteous Fury.

Spell Ranks - Spell ranks will cease to exist. All spells will have one rank and will scale appropriately with level. The levels at which you can learn certain spells are being changed in order to fill in some of the gaps, and we will be introducing some new spells to learn along the way as well.

Weapon Skill - This stat will be removed from the game completely. Classes will start with all the weapon skills they need to know and will not need to improve them.


What Else You Should Know

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.

Reforging - While these changes will go a long way to making a wider variety of stats more attractive, we understand that sometimes you simply don’t want more Hit Rating on your gear or you’d rather have more Haste than more Crit. In Cataclysm, we are going to give players a way to replace stats on gear as part of the existing profession system. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll be able to convert one stat to 50% of another stat. While some conversions (like converting Stamina to Strength) won’t be permitted, the goal is to let you customize your gear more.

Gems - We are changing the gem colors of a few stats as a result of these adjustments. For example, Hit is likely to be blue instead of yellow. We'll have more details on this in the future.

Changes to Existing Gear

As with previous expansions, we plan to roll out these changes and modify all existing gear shortly before Cataclysm launches, though it’s still too early to say exactly when. For the most part, the gear you have will still be good for you, though there will be exceptions, such as warriors using leather and mail armor.

If you are a tank (druids excepted), expect to see:

* No more Defense on gear. Existing Defense becomes Dodge, Parry, or Block Rating.
* No more Block Value on gear. Existing Block Value becomes Block Rating.
* You’ll have as much Stamina as you’re used to, though you may notice your tanking plate has a bit less Stamina than a comparable piece of DPS plate, since we tend to take the gem budget out of your most attractive stat.
* Bonus Armor on gear will go down slightly.


If you are a melee DPS class, druid tank, or hunter, expect to see:

* A lot more Stamina. Bear-form Stamina scaling will be lowered as a result.
* Strength if you wear plate. Agility if you wear mail or leather.
* Existing Attack Power becomes Agility and Stamina.Armor Penetration becomes Haste or Crit.
* No Intellect on melee gear. Hunters won’t need Intellect since they will no longer use mana. Shaman and Retribution paladins will get mana and spell damage in other ways.


If you are a DPS caster, expect to see:

* A lot more Stamina.
* All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
* No Spirit. You won’t miss Spirit, though, because you won’t need it for DPS or mana regen.


If you are a healer, expect to see:

* A lot more Stamina.
* All of your Spell Power converted to Intellect and Stamina.
* Spirit instead of MP5. You’ll probably be happy with Spirit, though, because mana regen is going to matter more than it does currently. Healing paladins and shaman will benefit more from Spirit than they do currently.


If you are a Balance druid or Elemental shaman:

* You will still share gear with Restoration druids and shaman.
* Your gear will have Spirit on it. It won’t have Hit on it.
* You will have a talent that converts Spirit to Hit. We will adjust talents accordingly so that you want about as much Spirit as, say, a warlock wants Hit.
* Hit on rings and other such gear will still benefit you.
* Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.


Many lower-level items with nonsensical combinations of stats, such as Agility and Spirit, will be changed. We're also updating quest rewards, trade skills, and loot drops to support better itemization for class builds that weren't widely available or used prior to The Burning Crusade (such as Balance druids).

We're aware this is a lot of information to take in, but this is still only a piece of the larger picture, and many of these changes rely on integration with other systems we haven't yet discussed in detail. In the weeks and months ahead, we'll continue to tell you more about these changes, along with all of the new and exciting features we have planned for Cataclysm.

[Vast]

Cataclysm Stats - General
Cataclysm stats recap
DPS cloth: Int, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (mage, warlock, Shadow priest)
Healing cloth: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Holy and Disc priest)

Melee leather: Agi, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise (rogue, Feral druid)
Spellpower leather: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Resto, Balance druid)

Physical mail: Agi, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise (hunter, Enhancement shaman)
Spellpower mail: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Resto, Elemental shaman)

DPS Plate: Str, Sta, Hit, Haste, Crit, Mastery, Expertise (Fury, Arms, Retribution, dps DKs)
Tanking plate: Str, Sta, Hit, Armor, Dodge, Block, Parry, Mastery, Expertise (Prot, Prot and tanking DKs)
Healing plate: Int, Sta, Spirit, Haste, Crit, Mastery (Holy paladins)

There will be exceptions. There might be some spellpower cloth with no hit or Spirit that healers and nukers may want. There will likely be Elemental tier sets with no Spirit. Jewelry and cloaks will be more class agnostic than actual armor pieces.

I wrote that quickly, so hopefully I didn't mangle anything. Smiley EDIT: You get a small mastery bonus for wearing the highest-armor gear capable for your class. Hunters in mail get a bonus. Hunters in leather do not.

Mastery bonus and armor type
There is a small Mastery bonus for wearing "your" gear. So a Balance druid who takes cloth will be essentially giving up free stats. Sometimes that may be worth it to them (just as sometimes it's worth it for a Resto druid to take that piece of +hit gear), but often times it won't be worth it especially if it's an upgrade for you. (Source)

Reforging
Think of reforging like enchants. It's not that you take a piece of gear and turn it into whatever you want. You pick up specific scrolls with specific conversions. We haven't decided on them all yet, but I imagine crit -> parry is not something you're likely to see. Maybe we'd do hit -> dodge for the tank who is full on or doesn't want hit. Maybe we'd do block -> parry to help DKs benefit from more plate.

Rest assured that we're not going to promote a system where Prot paladins want dps plate for tanking more than tanking plate. Part of all of these changes are to discourage behavior like that. We don't want to recreate it immediately in a different form. (Source)

Haste in Cataclysm
Haste will basically remain the same for casters. It is changing for melee classes, however. Haste will also allow melee classes to recover their resources more quickly, effectively letting them hit their buttons more often. (Source)

Gem sockets and item budget
We take gem budgets out of the most attractive stat on a piece of gear, in order to avoid anything with sockets always trumping similar gear without sockets. As such, socketed tanking plate has less base stamina but with gems, you’ll almost certainly end up with more health than dps classes. (Source)

Mastery Bonus
You get a mastery bonus (i.e. free stats) for wearing your gear. If shaman or druids wear cloth, they will do so at a slight stat loss. Sometimes that may still be worth it. (Source)

Spirit
Spirit is currently on a lot of cloth gear because it is considered a healing AND dps stat. We are changing it to just be a healing stat. There will still be a lot of it on leather though, just not every piece. Both Spirit and hit are the kind of thing you want enough of and no more than that. Since there won't be any buffs that boost hit or Spirit, you shouldn't often find yourself in excess. (Source)

[...] If we solve the Spirit -> hit conversion through a talent, it will be tacked on to an existing talent so that you aren't really paying for it. We like the talent approach more than a passive ability because the talents let you tell the game "I'm trying to be a caster, not a healer now."

I've read several players say that they like to reach their hit cap and then be done with it. But that doesn't really happen because every tier there is more and more hit on gear, forcing you to either swap out some of your excess hit or avoid the new stuff completely. The new model is more that all that extra hit on higher ilevel gear will have a use.

Plate / Cloth Armor differences
Plate will still possess much more armor than cloth, the difference just wont be as significant as it is now. (Source)

[...] posted something similar in the Cataclysm forum, but let's look at actual numbers. A level 80 Prot warrior in Icecrown gear unbuffed has like 45,000 health and 30,000 armor. A level 80 mage in Icecrown gear unbuffed might have 20,000 health and 2000 armor. Yes, 2000 armor. We have a lot of room to narrow the gap a little. It's a big gap. (Source)

[...] Someone (Angua?) had a post awhile back that explained this using numbers. Cloth won't have as much armor as plate. But maybe it will have half as much armor as plate instead of one fifth as much armor as plate (or whatever the ratios end up being at higher levels).

Really, cloth isn't the issue, since cloth wearers have spells to buff their mitigation. Leather wearers are the ones who end up the most fragile. Mail would be bad too except that shaman can use shields when needed and hunters typically don't get hit by melee much. We just want to bring things a little closer to each other. It's easier to establish a baseline for how hard a particular attack should hit for when one dps spec isn't literally four times as survivable as another. (Source)

Tanking
Is threat fun?
When threat doesn't matter as a tank, then maximizing your rotation doesn't matter much either. To use the warrior example, you could skip Devastate, Revenge and Shield Slam and just autoattack and use defensive cooldowns. Is that fun? On the other hand, many of the requests we see are for harder hitting attacks, especially on the AE front, so that in essence it's less work to tank multiple mobs at once. Is this really what you want?

I would assert in the current game that threat is almost never an issue. It might be an issue in the first few seconds of a fight (including when new adds join the party) or when the dps severely outgear the tank (such as in a Dungeon Finder situation). Especially in a world with Misdirect, Tricks of the Trade, and Tauntable bosses, tanks on single-target raid fights get so far ahead of the dps and healers, that catching them would be almost impossible. We could definitely tone this down a little such that tanks needed to fight for threat a little more than they do now. Some players would welcome that change and some would say that Blizzard hates tanks and makes them work too hard. (Source)

Tank specs in Cataclysm
Tanks will still be required to tank raids and I expect most heroics. You're not in any danger of being upstaged by a dps spec who has slightly more armor and health than they do now.

Tank vs non-tank classes
Let's compare a level 80 tank to a non-tank. Unbuffed, a level 80 mage in Icecrown gear might have 20,000 health, 2000 armor, 5% dodge, 0% parry, 0% block. Unbuffed, a level 80 Protection warrior in Icecrown gear might have 45,000 health, 30,000 armor, 25% dodge, 20% parry and 20% block. To be fair, the mage can cast armor and has a few defensive spells. The tank has Defensive Stance, cooldowns like Shield Wall and Last Stand, and cannot be crit by mobs.

Now the mage gets converted to Cataclysm. Let's pick totally wild numbers, like +50% health and +200% armor, which I hope are much too large. The mage now has 30,000 health and 6000 armor. Wow! Still... think he's going to be tanking anything? The tank still mitigates so much damage through armor (what he doesn't avoid) that he'll still shrug off hits that flatten the poor mage tank.

The numbers are really far off at the moment. We have a lot of room to bring them closer together while still leaving them very far apart.(Source)

"Terrible" stats
I actually disagree with that. The problem we have with current stats is that some are good and some are terrible. To use the Resto druid for example, crit isn't useful because so many hots can't crit and haste isn't useful because so many hots can't be hasted (and talents provide generous cast-time reduction already). To use another example, some mages are very near the crit cap to the point where a trinket that proc'd crit (or even a free crit) would be less attractive that one that proc'd haste. It's not that crit is bad for them. It's just that they have too much.

The problem is that some stats are twice as good as other stats. If crit was slightly better than haste, you'd take crit given the choice, but still wear haste. (Source)

Shield mechanics in Cataclysm
You'll still be able to line up trinkets and abilities to get really good blocks when you need them. We think this design will let us make blocks more meaningful to the tanking experience since you could actually block 20,000 or more damage on a 60,000 hit. Being able to trivialize lower level mobs is sort of a bizarre perk though (and one not shared by all tank classes) and not something we're really interested in preserving. (Source

[...] Yeah, that is sort of the intent. We don’t like that block allows certain tanks to trivialize older content. Older content is always going to be easy, but it was a little strange that warriors and paladins could literally take no damage with enough block while DKs still took some damage. Stats need to scale and this one wasn’t. (Source)

Tanking stats disparities
Once upon a time, being a "mana sponge" was a scary thing. Nobody (esp. druids) wanted to be the meat shield that had huge health pools but drained the healers dry. When mana matters, avoidance matters more too. I'm not saying parry will ever trump Stamina, but perhaps Stamina won't trump parry by quite as much as it does today. (Source)

Healing
Healers and mana management
Imagine you have 3 heals: normal, big and fast. The big heal is expensive and the fast heal isn't very efficient.

In your 1st tier, healers use their normal heal. The others are reserved for emergencies. In subsequent tiers, their regen is such that they can afford to branch out more into the expensive big heal and the inefficient fast heal. But while that is happening, the encounters are stepping up too. You'll need the fast heal sometimes because the damage is coming in too fast. You'll need the big heal more because sometimes you have to get someone back from the brink in a single GCD. Fortunately, as you approach the final tier, your mana regen is such that you can handle not casting your base heal as often.

The problem currently is that efficiency is a pretty low concern given that if you don't land a heal right this second, someone may die, and your chance of running out of mana is pretty low in the first place. There is every reason to just use the inefficient flash heal. Likewise, health is too low (relative to damage) so the big heal is just overhealing. And someone can probably flash your target up before you finish that long cast. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Scourge Strike and DKs in PvP
We don't like melee strikes hitting for straight magical damage. We went through a lot of similar balance issues when Ret hit for so much Holy damage and to a lesser extent with Frost DKs. I agree we have some confusing tooltips, but I don't agree that Scourge Strike is one of them. It's a weapon attack that hits for physical damage. If there are diseases on the target, it adds some Shadow damage too. Doesn't seem that complicated.

[...] We're happy with how much damage DKs can do in PvP. They were too susceptible to dispels, and we have now implemented a fix to help with that.

Class abilities are different. Envenom is not Scourge Strike. Rogues still do a lot of physical damage. Frost Strike still hits for 100% magic damage, but it's a more controlled ability. The DK in PvP hitting for huge Scourge Strikes over and over again is not something we're going to go back to. It may have been fun, but I assert it was fun because it was overpowered not because Shadow damage is somehow more entertaining.

Players using armor pen to hit for physical damage do not hit for magical damage. The closest argument could make is that bleeds act similar to magic damage.

Obliterate is a different ability. Unholy has talents that play off of both Scourge Strike and Shadow damage. If we see Unholy DKs literally going to Obliterate and skipping those relevant talents (which some PvE DKs were doing before), then we would make changes, but they don't seem to be doing that now. We're certainly not going to make Scourge Strike HIT REAL HARD in order to distinguish it, so make sure you're asking for what you really want and not try to sneakily ask for a damage buff.

In general, I find arguments to be generally weak that say "This class does X so I should be able to as well." If you have specific problems in PvP, mention those. If you think your damage is too low to exert pressure, that's a fine conversation to have. I would try to do it without the "But X ability hits hard, so mine should too" talking points.

Finally, this dead horse feels a little dead to me. You might want to check out some of our (numerous) comments on the intent for Scourge Strike before you hit that Post button again. (Source)

Druid (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Druid tanking in Cataclysm
If druids have lower avoidance (assuming you call the new parry and block avoidance), then they'll have higher armor and health to compensate. There is no reason druids must have block and parry to be competitive. They really haven't missed it much in WotLK.

I think the only real risk to druids from a design paradigm perspective is the risk of being a mana sponge. Druids were worried about that coming into this expansion, but as we've seen, it wasn't an issue. With mana mattering more, it could be, but high armor will still help with that.

The comment about leather was just that if leather provides as much health as plate, then the Bear multiplier doesn't need to be as high for druids still to have higher health than other tanks. (Source)

Mage (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Spell ranks removed - What about the food/water?
There won't be a way or need to cast the lower level spells. If you're just worried about losing the flavor of croissants vs. strudel, we're keeping that. At some point you'll just start making the better breads. (Source)

[Scoresby]

There was some mention about how they didn't want to make every class like another in the post. Unfortunately, I feel this is exactly where they've gone wrong historically. Rather than accepting the fact that druids, warriors, dks, and paladins are all pretty well defined for different roles, they attempt to cram them all in the same mold. What would be wrong with having a boss that hits so hard, even through mitigation, that the huge health pool of a druid makes the choice obvious? Heavy magic damage, how about a DK? Etc. Same goes for the DPS discussion about not allowing melee to do melee+spell damage in their attacks (the big issues being the spell component to some DK attacks). I'd see this is as an ability to make ret paladins and DKs excel over rogues/warriors on a few fights as easily as stacking armor on the boss.

There's so much emphasis on balancing every class so they're all within the +/- 5% range of one another, that the individual nature of a class gets washed out. What you end up with is a few classes that are typically always on the top (until the next patch) and others will simply be inferior (see the damage charts Portly/Crule posted). Raid composition should be like an investment strategy..spread it around and have a healthy mix, don't worry so much about the min/max. Instead, by attempting to make everyone equal, there's always a direct line of comparison and someone is left out.

Doesn't look like this is changing much. The idea of "lets add a lot of HPs for everything in Cataclysm" is scary too. Maybe one day MMO devs will learn item/stat inflation is a bad thing.

Wish I had read they were going to bring back more resist check type fights. That's actually a nice way to give a guild a lateral progression path (grind out your resist sets before you can beat a boss) and add some dynamics to fights that has practically been abandoned in WoTLK. I've always thought that was the correct way to separate PVE/PVP gear. Stack resists on PVE gear (and have several fights that actually make having resists raidwide a good thing) and hps on PVP gear with the item budget. Both sets of gear still have limited utility in their opposing arena and you don't feel totally gimped by not having one or the other.

Oh well, /rant off.

Scoresby

[Vast]

So far, I like the direction they're going with healing in Cata (ie. large health pools, mana regen being much more important, using your entire healing library).

[Heric]

So far, I like the direction they're going with healing in Cata (ie. large health pools, mana regen being much more important, using your entire healing library).

exactly what i was thinking, and its seriously making me consider take up the holy priest again

[Vast]

Last week, we gave you an early look at the changes we’re making to the stat system in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, and explained how these changes will ultimately provide players with more interesting gear choices and make stats easier to understand. Today we’d like to go into more detail about a brand-new feature that’s an integral part of this overhaul: the Mastery system, a set of new game mechanics designed to allow players to become better at what makes their chosen talent tree cool or unique. With this system, we want to accomplish three things: give players more freedom in how they allocate talent points, simplify some of the “kitchen sinky” talents that try to do too much at once, and add a new stat to high-level gear that makes you better at your chosen role.

Here’s how the system works: As you spend points in a given talent tree, you’ll receive three different passive bonuses specific to that tree. The first bonus will increase your damage, healing, or survivability, depending on the intended role of the tree. The second bonus will be related to a stat commonly found on gear desirable to you, such as Haste or Crit. The third bonus will be the most interesting, as it will provide an effect completely unique to that tree -- meaning there will be 30 different bonuses of this nature in the game. This third bonus is the one that will benefit from the Mastery rating found on high-level (level 80 to 85) gear.

One of our primary goals with Mastery is to give players more flexibility to choose fun or utility-oriented talents rather than make them feel obligated to pick up “mandatory” but uninteresting talents, such as passive damage or healing. (For examples of the kinds of powerful but boring talents we’re talking about, take a look at the talent tier just above the 51-point talent in many of the existing trees.) In a sense, Mastery makes it so every talent in (just for example) a rogue tree essentially has an invisible additional bullet point that says “???and increases your damage by X%.” This way, if you choose a talent like Elusiveness (which reduces your chance to be detected while stealthed) or Fleet Footed (which affects movement), you won’t feel like you’re giving up damage in exchange for utility.

There will still be talents that boost damage, of course, but those talents will also affect the way you play. For example, you can still expect to see talents like Improved Frostbolt, which reduces the cast time of the Frostbolt spell; it increases DPS, but it also affects the mage’s rotation. Piercing Ice, however, is just “6% more damage” and is the kind of talent we’re trying to eliminate by implementing the Mastery system.

As we get closer to Cataclysm’s release, we’ll go into more detail about the changes coming for each class, including individual talent-tree adjustments and how Mastery will affect them. In the meantime, here are a few examples to demonstrate the three kinds of passive bonuses we described above. Please keep in mind that we're still working on this system, and the handful of examples we're providing here are, of course, subject to change.

Holy Priest
For each talent point spent in the Holy tree, the priest also gets:

* Healing – Improves your healing by X%.
* Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent from the Discipline tree, which many Holy priests consider to be a “must-have.” Regeneration will also probably be determined by whether you are in or out of combat, and not the “five-second rule.
* Radiance – Adds a heal-over-time effect to direct heals, such as Flash Heal. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.


Discipline Priest
For each talent point spent in the Discipline tree, the priest also gets:

* Healing – Improves your healing by X%.
* Meditation – Improves your mana regeneration from Spirit in combat. This would likely replace the existing Meditation talent.
* Absorption – Improves the amount of damage absorbed by spells such as Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.


Frost Death Knight
For each talent point spent in the Frost tree, the death knight also gets:

* Damage – Improves your melee and spell damage by X%.
* Haste – Improves your melee Haste by Y%. This might allow us to remove some of the Haste in the Icy Talons line of talents.
* Runic Power – Improves the rate of runic power generated by abilities. While all death knights want runic power, Frost death knights would generally have more runic power than Blood or Unholy death knights (who would receive a different benefit from their respective trees). An Unholy death knight who sub-specs into Frost would still be able to benefit from this bonus, though because they’re investing fewer talent points, they’d benefit to a smaller degree. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it.


A couple other things to note: Currently, we’re not planning to retrofit the Mastery stat onto current level-80 gear when we roll out the stat-system changes prior to Cataclysm’s release. However, Mastery will begin appearing on select quest and dungeon items. You will also gain a small amount of Mastery by wearing gear of your intended armor type (such as plate for paladins). For players with dual specs, when you change between your two chosen specs, the Mastery bonuses and the benefit you receive from the Mastery stat on gear will adjust automatically based on your new spec.

We’ll have more details to share about these and other changes we’re making in Cataclysm in the future, and we’ll do our best to answer your questions about the Mastery system here on the forums. For information on many of the stat changes being made in Cataclysm, please check out our earlier update at -