Yesterday while I was in the middle of interviewing a Blizzard dev (video to follow), the WoW class panel blew everyone's mind with how class balance and mechanics will change when World of Warcraft: Cataclysm hits. The news, when I got to it, melted my brain for a good twenty minutes, and when I scooped my gray matter off the floor and stuffed it back in my ear I knew I had to share it with you.
It seems to me that the theme of Cataclysm can be stated as such: We're fixing what was wrong with the original game. They editing lens that they are focusing on the leveling zones in Kalimdor is also burning its way through the class system as well. Perhaps with the luxury of not adding a new hero class this time around the boys in the class department had a chance to apply the Cataclysm theme in their own way. Certainly they are reforging how we play classes in WoW much like the map of Azeroth is being reforged.
If you take a look at the announcements made during yesterday's class panel, you'll see what I mean. First, we learned that confusing, useless or difficult stats will vanish completely -- among them spellpower, armor penetration, attack power, block value, even defense rating. Essentially, it seems as if during the last few years the class designers were trying to modify playstyle for the classes by adding new and interesting stats to the mix. Is Spirit not working? Let's add MP5, and let mana regen in combat and out of combat separate.
Now with Cataclysm we see that instead of complicating matters with a bunch of esoteric stats, they are instead making the original core set work as they originally intended. Spellpower, currently incredibly important, overshadows the importance of Intellect. Instead of stacking SP all over the place, we will now have casters use Intellect, which will now actually modify your spell damage and healing the way it should have all along. See? Fixing what was wrong.
Continuing with this theme, the class department also looked at two classes that have simply lost their lustre: hunters and warlocks. For hunters, word came down that they will no longer use mana as their resource system, but instead focus. Ammunition will we an equipped item, possibly something that drops from mobs -- they're not exactly sure.
Warlock are receiving the largest of the changes. No longer will they simply be mages with pets. The soulshard system is shifting into something akin to Death Knight runes, and the shards can be spent for abilities in combat such as instant fear and demon summoning. The warlock will no longer have to farm shards to summon others or make healthstones. All those activities will be shard free. It really feels like they are giving warlocks a new lease on life.
No doubt we will see changes to the other classes, albeit smaller onces, as the months count down to the 2010 release of Cataclysm. It may be however that the other classes are mostly solidified, and will simply change when the stats shift around. Either way, the way we play our classes has officially changed forever.
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