Cataclysm Class Change Expectations, Part 1

I don’t know whether it’s come to your attention, but Cataclysm is sliding towards us inch by inch, and Blizzard is giving us teaser on teaser. Azeroth is being re-done, and destroyed in the process, we’re getting flying mounts in the old world, all the classes are seeing significant updates, and, of course, we’re getting new race/class combinations. Of course, the day Cataclysm comes out, we’ll be drowning in Worgen and, to a lesser degree, Goblins. I’m betting we’ll see a fair few Tauren Paladins knocking about as well.

What’s got me thinking though, is wondering how deep the class changes are going to go. Blizzard have given a few hints and tips about what’s going to happen, but at this stage most of it is meaningless noise. That doesn’t stop us from being able to speculate and hope though, right? That’s what these guys were doing after a jaunt through Karazhan the other day:

A change that I’ve found interesting is the decision to make Tree of Life a cooldown, as opposed to a permanent form change for Druids. I only ever got into the early 30s with my Druid, but the defining feature of our nature loving friends is that they are capable of changing their form at will to augment and improve the abilities of their chosen spec. A Druid that stays in caster form… I don’t really know how to approach that idea. On the one hand, Tree of Life is currently a flat buff that happens to change the way you look, but then again so is Moonkin form and Shadowform. As yet, we’ve no suggestion that those forms are going to be altered in any way. Tree of Life will be something to keep an eye out on, I think. It’ll be… interesting, to see how that works out.

Warriors are getting their Rage normalised come Cataclysm, which sounds like a good idea on paper but I suspect will take a lot of tweaking come the time. At the moment my experience of Warriors in dungeons seems revolve around an equal split of them either having so much rage they don’t know what to do with it or so little that they either can’t keep aggro or can’t do enough DPS to stay on the meters at all. Normalising that vital component is going to take some work.

Death Knights… well, I don’t know how much change they’ll see. We already know that Blood is going to be the tanking tree, Frost the dual wield tree, and Unholy the 2hand DPS tree… so, basically it’s going to be how it is at end game now pretty much. Sounds like a big change, but really most of the ground work has already been done by the players. I’m intend to enjoy the last hurrah of Unholy tanking as I level my Death Knight, but I won’t be gutted when Blood becomes THE tree for that. As long as Unholy keeps the permanent Ghoul, I’m happy.

Now… a class close to my heart. The Paladin. I rolled mine well after they became popular. I started healing just after Holy got nerfed. I tanked before Ardent Defender got fixed. I even played Retribution, despite my deep dislike of DPSing. Whatever they do to Paladins, it can’t be enough. Despite my love my tankadin, Paladins are… boring. That’s it. They are boring. As Retribution, you get a choice 5 buttons to press. The way you decide which of these to press is simple. You press whichever button is linked to the ability which isn’t on cooldown. It’s mind numbing. As a tank, you start your 6969 rotation, and once you’ve started, you’re locked into it until either you or the mobs you’ve attacked are dead. Boring. As Holy, you cast Beacon of Light, maybe Judgement of Wisdom, and the Flash of Light, pretty much for the same duration as the tank does his rotation, i.e. until either you or the group of mobs are dead. BORING.

Whatever happens, I hope Blizzard do something to mix up the Paladin class a bit. It’s referred to as a face roll class, and as one of it’s staunchest supporters, I can honestly see why. It’s just so… BORING! The new cooldowns and abilities that are being added should be interesting, and provide a bit more in terms of choice and rotation for all 3 specs, but it’s going to take more than a few new shiny spells to make the class less dull and listless.

Part 2 will be up later in the week, after I’ve found things to moan about with my Priest and Shaman.