sport and news: Dev Watercooler: On patch 5.4 class changes

Thursday, 15 August 2013

Dev Watercooler: On patch 5.4 class changes

It's been a little while since we've last seen any Dev Watercoolers, but boy, was this one ever worth the wait. Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street lays out, in reasonable detail, the general thoughts and ideas behind many of the class changes coming in the next WoW patch, starting with Death Knights and going the whole way down the list. Paladins and Hunters especially have a lot of meat to their discussion sections, as Ghostcrawler explains, because many of the changes coming to those classes are relatively complex and require greater explanation to fully understand. Overall, classes and specs facing significant changes are blood DKs, resto druids, all hunter specs, frost mages, mistweaver monks, all paladin specs, combat rogues, affliction warlocks, and protection warriors. In addition, there are many changes to talents and glyphs for all classes and specs.

As a raiding restoration druid, I personally am very happy about a lot of the changes coming our way. Making Nature's Swiftness a base resto ability in particular is a nice return to some Good Ol' Days, and now I'll have to decide whether I want the new Ysera's Gift talent, or Cenarion Ward (for now I'm leaning Cenarion Ward). I also--from the perspective of a resto druid--find the discussion on the state of holy paladins, and the changes coming their way, to be interesting as well. Ghostcrawler talks a bit about the way the developers at Blizzard believe paladin healing should feel, and specifically contrast it against druid healing. Many players have long pointed out how druid healing and paladin healing were basically opposites on a spectrum--the former being primarily pre-emptive, healing over time focused, and the other being primarily reactive, direct healing focused--and it's fascinating to read about the official thoughts on just those differences.

The full blue post is after the break.

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Mists of Pandaria