Between the removal of mp5 as a form of mana regeneration, many of the changes announced at Blizzcon have been explained in more detail by Eyonix.
The best change for me?
Raid buffs will no longer boost Spirit, so you shouldn’t find yourself unexpectedly over the Hit cap because of buffs.
If I read that right, does that mean no more Divine Spirit for Priests? If so, we’ll hopefully get another ability to compensate.
More importantly? A 33% reduction in candles used! Hooray!
More health
Anyway, there’s a lot of reading to do in between the lines. For example, if you check out the second post about changes to existing gear? You’ll notice there are some common qualities among the various roles:
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.
This is Blizzard’s way of increasing the challenge of healing without having to resort to having stuff hit way harder and relying solely on reaction time. I did triage healing before during Vanilla, and it was quite the experience (it’s also something I want to write more about later on).
But notice how everyone is getting a lot more stamina. Health pool gaps between plate and other armor wearing classes are being narrowed. For healing, this removes a strategic component. An example is that on a fight like Blood Queen, if a Priest, a Mage, and a Paladin have the Pact of the Dark Fallen debuff, the Priest and the Mage would typically be prioritized first. Their gear doesn’t have as much stamina as the Paladin does. Since all classes will have similar amounts of health, we don’t have to spend that split second to prioritize the cloth wearers first.
I’m fairly certain that our healing spells won’t be scaling as high. We won’t be seeing as much players with full health in raid fights. Healing will revolve much more around priority, priority, and priority (more on that later).
Spell Power on weapons
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.
I love that change.
Questions to ask
- Is Divine Spirit actually going to be removed or is it just the spirit component of the various stat increasing raid buffs?
- What happens to Inner Fire? Does it simply provide a boost to Intellect with Spell Power being removed?
Also if you are reading a little more between the lines:
In the post they stated these item changes will probably happen before the expansion is released.
Since hunters no longer receive intellect on their gear they will need to have their new no mana mechanic before Cataclysm launches. This seems to go in line with releasing new talent trees before expansion launches as well.
Perhaps we will see many more class changes before launch because of the significance of the gear changing!
My favourite is that mage’s Arcane Intellect might actually be considered a good buff instead of a “meh” buff.
.-= Darthregis´s last blog ..My BM vs My MM =-.
Matt, I think you are reading it incorrectly. He states that “Buffs that increase stats by a percentage a la Blessing of Kings will not boost spirit.”
I doubt very much that they will drop divine spirit from a priest’s lineup.
@Firespirit: You may very well be right. I know Paladins have it bad with their blessings and all that, but I’d say Priests are second. ^^
They don’ t need to make stuff hit harder with the change to parry most tanks will loose a lot of avoidance so will need more heals
Wait waht? 2 50% DR from parry = 100% right?
Not the way blizz applies percentage based DR. It is all applied multiplicatively. basically this means the more armor a tank has the less DR they get from parry. On average expect parry to reduce damage by ~35%
@anothertank: If it’s applied multiplicatively, it’ll do exactly what’s claimed: remove one hit’s worth of damage.
Let’s just say there are two multiplicative effects: armor and the parry effect, and boss swings for 50k unmitigated, and your armor reduces attacks by 60%.
A regular hit = 50k * (1-.6) = 20k
Thus two regular hits = 40k
A Parried hit does 50k * (1-.6)*.5 = 10k damage, and so will the next one. So you take 20k damage total (aka one full attack less of damage).
What’s unclear is what happens when you parry two attacks in a row. How will the 50% reduction effects stack?
I bet that inner fire won’t be changed. They are removing spell power from gear(weapons excluded). Spellpower will still be a stat on your paper doll. So I see no reason to touch inner fire.
I’ve been hearing rumors that Holy Paladins are actually going to get another healing spell. It will be tough to let go of the Paladin that Wrath brought us; I hope we fare as well in Cataclysm.
.-= jeffo´s last blog ..What’s in a name? =-.
As a melee DPS (fury warrior, specifically), I’m cheering over here. I have to worry less over whether this stat needs to take priority over that one in my next build with the upcoming gear drops… *happy Tauren Snoopy dance*
I’m excited to finally be able to keep up with disc priests again! Those darn disc priests are painfully OP right now since they’re the only ones not contending for the small amount of healing that needs to be done per cast before overhealing. Since shields get stripped off first, your absorbs are 0% overhealing assuming that player takes damage, while the rest of us are trying to fight for the 8k hit the raid just took before it’s all filled up. 🙂
I like this change. Less twitchy, reactionary healing will be a very good thing, imo.
-Z
Sorry for my english:
I´ve been thinking about Chakra…..and I don´t like it (the way blizzard is showing it).
What i think would be nice is something like ‘Holy stances’ (more or less like warrior´s stances). I like to have the control of when to be a tank-healer, when a hot-bot, or the raid ass-saver.