WotLK Beta Patch Notes

[Artega]

Adding these as I go down the list:

* Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.

I like this change. There seems to be a new trend towards consolidating stats, and this goes a long way towards that goal. May make those dreaded melee Mages overpowered, though.

* Spellpower:
o All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant "increased spell damage and healing" such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
o For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
o Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive more benefit from spellpower than they received from bonus healing, with a net effect of no change to the amount healed by their spells. Some talents have had to be rebalanced to accommodate this change, but the amount healed will remain roughly the same. In addition, some talents will provide only healing spell power.

I understand this on the surface, but I think I'm too stupid to be able to imagine it being implemented. I guess I'll have to wait for screenshots and stuff to understand exactly how they're implementing this.

For talents: Strongly recommend using the patch notes in tandem with Wowhead's WotLK talent calculators, located here. It's already directed to Druid talents, since those are the first being covered. It looks like they haven't updated for these Beta notes, however.

I'm excited about the Paladin changes. It's not everything that I believe the class needs (I'm still an adamant believer in Holy Shield being made a baseline ability), but the changes they're listing so far do imply that they are listening to what the more intelligent members of the community are saying since many of them are carbon copies of what they've requested. There's still a lot of work to do on the class, but the changes listed in these patch notes leave me feeling optimistic for the first time in a long time.

A Seal of Corruption is mentioned; could Pallies be doing Shadow damage in the expansion?

Shaman talents are interesting. Restoration Shammies will be getting a slightly different version of Cleanse (curing poisons, diseases, and curses instead of poisons, diseases, and magic.) Early Enhancement will finally be worth investing in for all specs; the new Shield Specialization in particular is impressive, with an incredible +20% Block for only two talent points.

The notes don't make the Warrior changes sound like much, apart from the obvious changes to how tanking will be done come WotLK, but looking at the talent tree on Wowhead almost makes me want to bring mine out of hibernation. I fell in love with the hybrid playstyle, being able to do fight like my warrior but also be capable of healing my allies, but these proposed Warrior changes are getting me excited to try the rough-and-tumble Rage-based gameplay style again.