FIrst official 3.1 preview

[Concillian]

Part 1: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...910002204&sid=1
Part 2: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...910422662&sid=1

We are planning a lot of exciting content for patch 3.1.0, and we are doing a three-part preview series on upcoming class changes. This is the first in the series: Priests, Rogues, and Shaman. Please keep in mind, that this list is not at all comprehensive, and subject to change.

PRIEST
# Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.
# Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).
# Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
# Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
# Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
# Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
# We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

ROGUE
# Hunger for Blood – instead of a self-buff, this ability can only be used when there is a bleed effect on the target. However, it has no stacks and grants a 15% damage bonus.
# Adrenaline Rush – the cooldown on this ability has been lowered.
# Lightning Reflexes – reduced to 3 ranks. In addition to 2/4/6% dodge, this talent now also grants 4/7/10% passive melee haste.
# Killing Spree – while this ability is active, the rogue does 20% additional damage.
# Savage Combat – now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
# Mace Specialization – this talent now grants haste in addition to armor penetration.

SHAMAN
# Chain Lightning – now jumps to 4 targets but does less damage. We wanted to make the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning more clear.
# Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.
# Spirit Weapons – now reduces all threat, not just melee threat.
# Unleashed Rage – reduced to 2 ranks, now also increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by 1/2%.
# Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.
# We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.

WARLOCK

# Improved Shadow Bolt – this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff (similar to Improved Scorch).
# Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)
# Drain Soul now has a chance to produce Soul Shards even if the target doesn’t die.
# Siphon Life no longer as an active ability but the talent grants the old Siphon Life effect to Corruption.
# Curse of Recklessness and Curse of Weakness have been combined into one spell
# Consume Shadows – this Voidwalker ability is no longer channeled but has a cooldown.
# Several other warlock talents have had their ranks reduced, their effects changed or removed. This list includes but is not limited to Demonic Empathy, Shadow Embrace, Eradication, Suppression, and Pandemic.
# Additional new talents have been added.

DRUID

# Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.
# Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.
# Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.
# Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.
# Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.
# Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.
# We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

WARRIOR

# Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost. In addition, we may change the penalties associated with some stances.
# You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield.
# Blood Frenzy now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
# Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP.
# We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam.
# We are also looking at granting rage when the warrior blocks, dodges or parries.

COMING SOON
Hunter
Death Knight
Mage
Paladin

[vor_lord]

edit: Original post updated with this information

[Tuftears]

* Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.

* Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.

I'm not sure why we need a crit->shield mechanism for druid tanking... Lame idea, IMO.

[Concillian]

I'm not sure why we need a crit->shield mechanism for druid tanking... Lame idea, IMO.

It's giving druids a "shield block". Looks to me like another step in tank homogenization.

[TheDragoon]

I'm not sure why we need a crit->shield mechanism for druid tanking... Lame idea, IMO.

From what I understand, a fair number of druids were complaining that they didn't have enough stats they cared about. This sort of an idea is a good way to diversify the type of gear druids look for by giving some defensive meaning to crit and attack power. It has the added benefit of helping druids with spell-based bosses, too (assuming it works for spells, I haven't actually seen confirmation of that anywhere but it would make sense). :)

[Lissa]

Looking over the Warlock listings, gonna have to see the new talents, but from the sounds of it, Affliction is going down the same road it did in tBC, that being it doesn't scale well and due to Demonology and Destruction scaling much better, Affliction will die down again as people get into Uldaur and Icecrown Citadel.

Also, I hope the idea for Arms is not using Overpower. Slam will be a far better way of improving Arms DPS than Overpower will unless they drastically change Overpower's mechanics around (usable in 'Zerker, doesn't require a dodge by the opponent, probably a couple other things if I really sat down and thought about it).

[Taelas]

I personally love the idea.

I can see it working on spells as currently druids are the worst spellcaster tanks (paladins have .857092 (.94 x .94 x .97) reduction and Ardent Defender, warriors have .846 (.9 x .94) and Spell Reflection, not sure about DKs but they were designed as caster tanks). Druids only have .88 reduction.

It also does something necessary: Reduces PvP gear as a viable option for progression tanking. PvP gear should be for PvP. Currently the highest EH gear in the game is the S5 Feral gear, I believe. PvP gear has less crit, hit and Expertise (all of which benefit this new ability), and Survival of the Fittest will have its armor% reduced.

Avoidance will also help this ability similar to how it helped Shield Block last its full duration pre-Wrath -- an avoided hit doesn't remove the shield.

If they allow the shield to stack, it'll pretty much be a block ability.

[Taelas]

Also, I hope the idea for Arms is not using Overpower. Slam will be a far better way of improving Arms DPS than Overpower will unless they drastically change Overpower's mechanics around (usable in 'Zerker, doesn't require a dodge by the opponent, probably a couple other things if I really sat down and thought about it).

Arms PvE damage currently revolves around Overpower and Rend.

[Concillian]

Arms PvE damage currently revolves around Overpower and Rend.

And Slam. They are all useful. But arms is way behind Fury. Deep wounds is providing the largest source of damage behind autoattack for some Fury warriors. How ironic is that.

[vor_lord]

Mana regeneration overhaul:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...910422908&sid=1

As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don’t want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a very real risk for sloppy playing or attempting content that you aren’t yet ready for. When mana regeneration is trivial then certain parts of the game break down – classes that offer Replenishment are devalued, stats that offer mana regeneration are devalued, and spells that are efficient are neglected in preference to spells with high throughput.

Here are a list of changes you are likely to see in 3.1. They will be available to try out on the PTR. Mana regeneration is somewhat technical, so please bear with us.

* Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.
* To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
* The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory” talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.
* Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
* In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.
* We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
* We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
* These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren’t necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam.

[vor_lord]

Replying to myself to comment:

* To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.

Affliction warlocks rejoice -- now you're the only class who wants spirit I think...

Time to start studying how to heal as discipline.

[Lissa]

Arms PvE damage currently revolves around Overpower and Rend.

And this is why Arms is so far behind Fury right now for DPS.

[Sir_Die_alot]

Arms PvE damage currently revolves around Overpower and Rend.

More like arms pve currently revolves around being a wasted raid slot.:PThere is so much wrong with arms pve I'm not sure they can fix it without a complete overhaul of the tree.

[Lissa]

Replying to myself to comment:
Affliction warlocks rejoice -- now you're the only class who wants spirit I think...

Time to start studying how to heal as discipline.

All Warlocks want spirit, especially those that go 13 deep into Demonology for the improved armors. Case in point, Hood of Rationality, something that a lot of Healing Priests want, is also best in slot for Warlocks with it attaining almost 160 SP with Improved Fel Armor up and no gems or head enchants placed up on it (with gems and head enchants, but before the effects of Kings, it becomes almost 200 SP for a Warlock with Imp Fel Armor).

As a non-Affliction Warlock, stats have the follow priority: SP, Hit (till cap), Haste, Crit, Spi <-> Int (Spi and Int are just about interchangeable). Considering, with Imp Fel Armor, every point of Spi = 0.39 SP, that adds up quick.

[Concillian]

Replying to myself to comment:
Affliction warlocks rejoice -- now you're the only class who wants spirit I think...

Time to start studying how to heal as discipline.

It's a little early to start with "the sky is falling" isn't it? We don't know what else they'll do to spirit to make it still attractive to priests and druids.

If they buff meditation to the point where spirit = MP5 @ 100% casting, then it's pretty close to the same use as it is now for holy priests, without having to dance the FSR.

You do have to admit that dancing the FSR is a pretty dumb mechanic. I thought about it once this way:
- I'm playing a computer game to occupy my free time
- In that game I'm attempting to maximize the amount of time where I am "actively" doing nothing.

It's a little counter-productive when you think of it that way... that inside a game I'm playing a metagame to maximize idle time. I welcome the changes that lead to the FSR dance removal.

This will likely come with Innervate changes to balance it out. I expect that will include some kind of move to % of max mana like every other class staple regen mechanic. I do think that it won't offer an overall terribly significant change. It will level the amount of regen possible between classes, which is good, that was slightly out of whack to begin with. However, without significant changes to the raid buffs, mana will still be an overall lesser concern. In a 25 man, you have replenishment offering 250ish MP5, BoW around 100, current MP5 around 200-300 and each healing tree has mechanics to allow another ~150-500 MP5 on top of that. Then there's class regen abilities which usually account for another 100-150 MP5 or so. Overall the raw MP5 on gear is such a small part of total MP5 anyway with all that. You have to really hit personal MP5 hard before it becomes really significant. Replenishment is the elephant in the living room. I expect that to get nerfed to a non-scaling effect.

[vor_lord]

I welcome the FSR dance removal.

That's why you're disc and I'm holy<_<

Chaining clearcasts is about the only entertainment value I am getting healing in raids as holy (even though the regen is totally unneeded). Sapphiron is an exception -- that fight is a blast healing as holy. I'm still not as effective as a druid spamming rejuv there but I pretty much guarantee I'm having more fun... :)

But you're right, it's way too early for me to be reacting as I am. They definitely need to do something with spirit though. As far as them doing something about it... MP5 on cloth has been shabby for two years now. A fix for spirit may not be as timely as we might want.

[Delc]

The FSR game was about the only thing I ever enjoyed about raid healing. Outside of that it alternated between fall asleep boring, and OMG DON'T SCREW UP OR WE WIPE!!!ELEVENTY!! Maybe things have changed since classic, but it doesn't really look like it.

[Mirajj]

Mage

* Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).
* We are also working on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance "Shatter combos" in PvE.
* We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.
* We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.


Paladin

* Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
* Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn't drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
* Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger's Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
* Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
* Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
* Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.


Hunter

* Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.
* A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.
* Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
* Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
* Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
* We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.


Death Knight

* Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle's damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
* Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
* Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
* The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
* Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans' Lightning Overload.
* Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
* Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.

~~~
Some more changes. All I can say about the Hunter changes is the one about Ammo. THANK GOD FINALLY! It'll be nice not to spend at least 50g a raid to refill the quiver.

[Klaus]

Some more changes. All I can say about the Hunter changes is the one about Ammo. THANK GOD FINALLY! It'll be nice not to spend at least 50g a raid to refill the quiver.

Now you have no excuse not to take your repair bill on a wipe like everyone else. B)

[Mirajj]

Now you have no excuse not to take your repair bill on a wipe like everyone else. B)

Hah. I often am dead on a wipe just like everyone else. I usually end up spending 40-50g on repairs, then I get to go and refill the quiver.