No time!

So I’ve been really failing at my blog. So uhhh, recent blue posts and interesting things.

Items Stats
In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, there are plans to streamline the statistics found on items. We want to remove all unnecessary stats, make all existing stats understandable, and make all “core” stats more appealing. Here are some examples of such plans.

• MP5: This will be removed from items and replaced with Spirit. All healers will be given a meditation-like ability.
• Spell Power: Spell Power is being removed from items as well. Don’t panic, we’ll be improving Intellect so that it provides mana and Spell Power.
• Attack Power: We’re removing Attack Power from items as well. Instead, we’re allowing Agility to provide the necessary Attack Power for leather and mail wearers. Strength will provide the appropriate amount of Attack Power for plate wearers. This means leather and mail items will no longer be desirable for plate wearers.
• Defense: The Defense statistic is also being removed from items so that players no longer have to worry about juggling around “the cap.” Tanks will receive the necessary anti-crit from talents, like Survival of the Fittest.
• Armor Penetration: This ability is too confusing and “mathy.” It is being replaced with Mastery, a stat that makes you better at what you do. More on that later!
• Haste: Will also increase the rate at which you gain energy, runes, and focus. Retribution paladins and Enhancement shaman will have a talent that allows them to take advantage of this benefit.
• Block: Block Value is being removed. Blocking will now always mitigate a percentage of damage.
• Stamina: Players will notice more Stamina on gear as Defense, Spell Power, Attack Power and Armor Penetration are removed.

Cataclysm Alpha/Beta Test
Let’s start with a small reminder: The Alpha/Beta Test of the expansion didn’t start and anything saying otherwise is a scam from people trying to steal your account. Trust me, when an Alpha version of Cataclysm is available, you’ll know about it.

Cataclysm Release Date
The 2nd most popular question on my list, what’s the release date of the expansion? We don’t know. The only thing we know at this point is that Cataclysm should be released in 2010 but Blizzard didn’t announce the exact date for the moment. Of course it never hurts to Preorder Cataclysm on Amazon.com or anywhere else.

Cataclysm – Guild Improvements
Wrath of the Lich King made guilds slightly less useful, a decent PUG can complete a lot of the raid content and finding people to run an heroic dungeon has never been so easy. Cataclysm will change that and make guilds more interesting than ever!

Guild Levels and Talents
Your guild can now gain experience and levels, the maximum level being 20. Your guild will gain experience through different ways :

• Playing with your guildmates and killing a raid boss or winning an arena match where more than 75% of the group is from your guild.
• Playing alone also helps your guild, leveling your character, your professions, or even your reputations will increase the level of your guild as well!

You won’t be able to level fast just by recruiting a hundred of members, guild leveling is restricted and only the top 20 earners each week will increase the experience of the guild.

Each level will reward you with a guild talent point, they can be spent to make your life easier in the game and will give you bonuses and abilities such as :

• Remove reagent costs from raid buffs.
• Reduce the cost of repairs.
• Increased gold drops from monsters or players that reward experience or honor.
• Summon your entire raid to a place.
• Resurrect your entire raid after a wipe. (30 min cooldown)
• Reduce the amount of rare reagents needed for professions. (Like reducing the amount of Frozen Orbs to craft a weapon)
• Automatically transfer a % of the gold dropped by monsters and bosses to the guild bank.

This is only a small preview of the talents and it already looks like a good reason to stick with your guild, but wait there is more!

Guild Items and Guild Currency
Guild experience will also be converted in a guild “currency” used to buy special items. These items are bound to the guild and you will have to stay in the guild to keep them, if someone leaves with a guild item it will just be returned to the guild bank.

You can expect various item rewards from this system:

• Heirlooms
• Mounts and pets
• Professions Plans (Leaving the guild will unlearn them)
• Potions and Rare Reagents
• Guild Banners
• Guild Bank Tabs and Guild Talents Respecs

Guild Achievements
Cataclysm will also add achievements for your guild, the mechanics are the same as guild leveling you will need a minimum ratio of guild members in the group to complete them. They will be very similar to player achievements and you can expect things like :

• Completing a raid instance with your guild
• Crafting one (or more!) legendary items
• Become a Grand Master in every profession
• Become Exalted with all Northrend factions

Looking for Guild
Cataclysm will also make the management of your guild much easier. A new “Looking for Guild” interface will be added, it will give players an easy way to find a guild and give leaders an easy way to find new members. This new feature will let you recruit people based on a few filters based on various requirements.

Improved Guild Interface
Tracking what’s going on in your guild will also be made easier with a new interface.

• The Guild News will let you check everything that happened in your guild: boss kills, members achievements, new item loot, profession leveling … It will come with different filters to let you find specific information.
• A new Roster tab will give you more information on your guildmates, you can see the professions of everyone in the guild and even check the list of their recipes to see if they can craft an item.
• The calendar will also let you invite other guilds to your guild events.

Healing in Cataclysm
I wouldn’t look to Icecrown as a taste of what’s to come with regard to healing. Icecrown is at the end of this expansion. At level 85 it’s okay if things feel a little different.

At a very coarse level, if you have a free GCD and can choose one of two spells we’d like for that choice to be between for example A) Your cheap spell that doesn’t heal for much and B) Your expensive spell that heals for a lot. Currently cheap vs. expensive is pretty meaningless so your choice is between small spell or big spell, which doesn’t feel like much of a choice, especially given the damage bosses can do.

But imagine that if you cast B every time when A would have been more appropriate, then the risk is you will run out of mana. You aren’t choosing your spells based solely on the mana (so it isn’t a primary focus) but better healers will be those that use the right spell for the situation.

[...] We don’t think the sky is falling. This change would primarily be for three reasons:

1) You care more about mana regen on gear instead of just throughput. This is the least important consideration because it still works today to some extent.

2) You care more about your whole arsenal of heals instead of just the biggest, fastest one. Paladins for example currently can go for a Flash of Light build or a Holy Light build but they aren’t often mixing the two together. A Holy Light focused paladin isn’t using FoL to hit the tank from a small hit. They’re just using HL and overhealing.

3) Boss encounters don’t need to be built around destroying the tank in 2 hits. Currently, that is one of the few ways we have to make players actually lose a fight. (The other is that you lose enough healers or dps through attrition that you just can’t keep going). Healers running out of mana used to be another point of failure and it pushed things in slightly different directions. Tanks for example cared slightly more about avoidance stats because nobody wanted to be the dreaded mana sponge. Standing in fires didn’t have to be about dying in 1 sec if you didn’t move — it was more that you wasted healer mana by taking unnecessary damage. DPS who didn’t do enough dps risked the fight going long and the healers running out of mana. Currently the long fight is only an issue if it opens up more chances for tank death or there is a severe berserk timer.

[...] We’re not sure the five second rule is a rousing success. It’s not necessarily fun for players to stand there and do nothing. It definitely wasn’t fun to heal in rotation and do nothing for a minute or two so you could regen.

What I’m talking about is just returning HPM (healing per mana) to being a consideration that actually matters again. Do you want to use the cheap spell or the expensive spell? Currently you only really care about the fast spell or maybe the big spell.

Healers will need some tools to manage their mana, and they already have some like Innervate and the Shadow Fiend. Those tools can’t be counted on for unlimited mana of course or we’re back to the same problem.

[...] The more careful selection of spells is actually what we’re going for. I think that can be just as challenging, and personally probably more fun, than the miss a GCD and the tank gets it style.

But really I was trying to offer reassurance to those healers who seem terrified that we’re going to make healing too hard in Cataclysm. That’s not the goal. Making it fun is the goal. However, when healing is too easy, it’s hard for it to be very fun. As I’ve said before (maybe in this thread?) DPS specs can try to see how fast they can make a farm run. The healer doesn’t really get to try and “heal faster” or whatever. The most fun a healer can have in content on farm status is trying to keep everyone alive as efficiently as possible. Efficiency implies a mana component. (Source)

Ephemeral Snowflake (Ephemeral Snowflake)
The Ephemeral Snowflake now has a tiny internal cooldown to keep it from being overpowered on spells such as Vampiric Embrance (when dotting multiple targets) and Wild Growth. It will still return mana as expected in most cases. (Source)