World of Warcraft Cataclysm: a Guide before the Release DateAs we all know,Blizzard have development many game,all of this are have many fans,like Starcraft,diablo.And the the famous game is Word of Warcraft.Along this two “Top Dogs” of the Gaming Industry, there is another brand new project in full operation at Blizzard: World of Warcraft Cataclysm, the third add-on for the most popular MMO out there: World of Warcraft. We know WoW reached a staggering 11.5 million subscribers. A number that other Massively Multiplayer Online RPG developers can only dream about. With the release of two successful addons: The Burning Crusade and The Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard thought three is a lucky number and decided to throw this “puppy” into out lap.All World of Warcraft fans know that the release of those two addons brought many changes, good and bad. The hard core Vanilla fans knew that altering with this “Holy Grail” of a game will corrupt every part of it and send it to Damnation, so they said “NO!!!”, much like a catholic priest says “NO!!!” to Evolution.(Sorry for the religious joke, but I couldn’t help it! ).So WoW changed a lot from the day of its birth (February 2004), this MMO matured constantly with every passing month. Childhood has passed, puberty has passed let’s see if adulthood is best for our favorite “drug”.
World of Warcraft Cataclysm: a Guide before the Release DateCataclysm is very different from the other two addons because the modifications from this one are done to the game core; nothing will be left the same, we could surely say that we are talking about a brand new game, not the WoW we know but a meaner, bearded WoW that was in the Corps and now drinks a lot of beer. It also tells the story of Deathwing, a big bad dragon that has rabies and attacks the entire world being the main bad guy in Cataclysm just like Arthas in WotLK and Illidan in TBC.As I stated earlier, WoW Cataclysm will bring a lot of new stuff, from gameplay mechanics to brand new content so let’s see what this is all about.The New content in the next World of Warcraft add-on includes two new races: the Worgen for the Alliance and the Goblins for the Horde.The Worgen are a race of werewolves, once residents of the famous City of Gilneas, a city that was isolated from the world. When a terrible plague struck Gilneas, all its inhabitants were transformed in these “Lovely” Puppies. These classes are available for the Worgen race: Death Knight, Druid, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Warrior, Warlock and Rogue. The Worgen also has brand new and interesting racials like Darkflight which increases your movement speed by 70% for about 6 seconds with a 3 minutes cooldown and True Form which transforms you from human to werewolf and vice versa.The Goblins, well we already know of them. They are the funny masterminds of the Horde,the green Gnomes of the dark faction. These tiny guys are fantastic to play in my opinion and I think they deserve their place in the War between The Horde and The Alliance. The Goblins also received new racials like Best Deals Anywhere, this racial allows you to buy with a 20% discount any reputation item regardless of your reputation with the faction your buying from, and Pack Hobgoblin which calls your personal servant that stores any item in way much similar to the bank. You get access to the Pack Hobgoblin every 30 minutes. Also here are the classes available for the funny Goblins: Warrior, Warlock, Hunter, Death Knight, Rogue, Priest, Mage and Shaman.Int WoW: Cataclysm, the maximum level cap is increased to 85. This is to ensure the brand new content has its meaning. A new addition to the increased level cap is the automatic upgrade of spells. A major change done to the mechanics of the game making it much easier not needing to upgrade your spells at your trainer at each level and saving some cash for something else like….beer?The majority of zones will be altered, and brand new ones will also be implemented like Gilneas (Starting Zone for The Worgen), the Lost Isles (Starting Zone for The Goblins), Mount Hyjal, Uldum and others.We know Blizzard has a tradition with implementing new professions in each add-on. While The Burning Crusade made jewelcrafters out of us and Wrath of the Lich King scribes, well Cataclysm will bring the Archeological part of us to the surface. Grab your picks and start digging because the ancient world is about to be revealed.Also all professions will get brand new recipes and the profession cap has been increased to 525 with a new rank: The Illustrious. Archeology lets you discover lost artifacts and restore them to recreate powerful new items. We hope Blizzard will release more details for this feature.A new feature available in the Cataclysm is the Mastery System. Similar to the Talent Tree, this system will give you bonuses for your talents of choice, an odd and complex system that I think will become a very important part of the WoW mechanics.The Masterminds of Blizzard thought that socialization between players in Cataclysm will bring them much joy and happiness so they implemented new stuff for Guilds. Some of these new features include a brand new Guild Interface, making it much easier to recruit and maintain a guild, Guild Achievements for those with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; this means an easier way to keep track of what they need to do next. A new and fun feature is the Guild Experience & Leveling (Boy! Blizzard brain storming is very efficient) with a level cap of 20, leveling up also includes a brand new Talent Tree for the Guild with talents like this: more gold looted from bosses/mobs, cheaper repair costs, a mass resurrection spell that can revive an entire raid (of course with a 30min cooldown), a summon portal for your raid and many other. Another new Guild feature is the implementing of some sort of guild currency, currency that allows you to buy special and unique items but with a twist: these items are guild bound meaning the moment you leave the guild these are transferred to the Guild Bank.In Cataclysm you can also dedicate yourself to a titan. This feature named the Path of the Titans is available only at max level (85) and will help you unlock 10 Ancient Glyph slots and some talent points. You can gain Ancient Glyphs through Archaeology. There are ten paths with ten titans. Choosing one and following his path will unlock all of the above, and by following his path, we mean PVP, raiding, raising your Archaeology skill, doing daily quest and so on. Some sort of new Lore. If you ask me, Blizzard employees are out of their minds, but in a good way.Now we’ve reached the core modifications. New core implements are done to PvP, Raiding, Item Stats and Class changes. Let’s start with the obvious: Wow Cataclysm PvP.This is what makes WoW top dog in my opinion. A balanced combat system with a lot of “pepper” (variety) and “salt” (balance).We will get many modifications to our favorite way to bash and slay our cyber nemesis in WoW. These mods include the implementation of new battlegrounds and arena locations, rated battlegrounds, new rewards system and a brand new Pvp Zone just like in WotLK with Wintergrasp.We didn’t receive any news about arena locations, no number or location just the fact that there will be a sum of them included. We will see.As for battlegrounds we know about just one: The Battle for Gilneas. It has a 40 men cap with a level range between 81 and 85.This battleground is based on capturing sectors of the city faster then the opposing faction.As I stated earlier, in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we will also have a little something called rated battleground. So Blizzard wants to make battlegrounds as official combat location just like arenas. This means they will implement a ladder system for these two hence removing battlegrounds for the unofficial PvP “bashing” scheme. Of course this was followed with the implementation of new rewards like new epic ground mounts, arena points and the comeback of Honor Titles.The new PvP zone is an island called Tol Barad, positioned in the middle of Baradin Bay in Eastern Kingdoms. The main objective of this island is a prison that, when captured, will allow the winning faction to do all sorts of special daily quests. The losing faction also get some dailies but not like the winning one. Oh and I forgot: if you capture the prison it allows you to do a raid instance just like Wintergrasp in WotLK with VoA.Prizes!!! Blizzard will also implement a new PvP reward system. They used the raiding reward system as inspiration with two types of points: low-end and high-end ones. The low-end points are called Honor Points and are easily obtainable through most PvP activities with a limit of how much you can have. The higher ones are called Conquest Points, available onlt through Rated Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds. These ones will be limited also on the number you can have and how fast you can get them. You already think by know: “How the heck is this similar to the Raiding System you dumb sh*t?” The answer is simple: there will always be two tiers of PvP items on the market: the low end ones which you will buy with honor points and the high end ones which you will buy with conquest points. When a new tier of PvP items hits the market the low end ones become obsolete and the high end ones take the place of the obsolete ones thus the new tier will become available for conquest points and the high end will become available for honor points and so on. Thus concludes the new PvP System, personally I think this deserves only strait As. Oh and I forgot you will have the opportunity to chance Honor Points into Hero Points (PvE) and vice-versa. Now let’s move on.Now in other news: Raids and Dungeons. The amount of new content in Cataclysm is staggering and includes new Raids and Dungeons. We will get four new raids with Cataclysm, with another two to be implemented later with patches. Also, 8 new dungeons and 2 Heroic old Dungeons will be implemented. Read and let the nostalgia sweep you of your old vanilla WoW fan feet.Also the core raiding system will be severely altered. Let’s see how:If you played WotLK you know of the 10man/25man system and heroic mode, well this will benefit most of the modifications. 10man and 25man raids will drop the same loot with more loot for the 25man raid; also they will share the same cooldown. Of course heroic mode will drop much better loot then normal mode. You can now change from normal to heroic mode in the raid, with the possibility to unlock heroic mode after you defeat that boss. So this means you can defeat a boss on normal mode and can choose to defeat the next one on heroic without forming another raid. This also means that raiding achievements will share the 10man and 25man feats.The reward system is almost the same. Only difference is that from now one there will be no more new badges, just two of them: Hero Points and Valor Points.Hero Points will be the low end badges awarded, these badges will have a limit you can carry but you can get them very quick. While Valor points will be the high end badges, these ones will have a limit you can earn and you will have a limited way to earn them to.To make it easier for you guys. If you played WotLK prior to 3.1.0 you remember the Emblems of Heroism and Emblems of Valor, it’s almost the same with them two and also with the tier armor like Heroes X and Valorous X but after patch 3.1.0 Emblem of Conquest appeared and took the place of Emblem of Valor for the high end badge. Well this won’t happen from now on. When a new type of PvE armor is released all you Valor points well be converted into Hero points so you cannot stockpile them for further usage and you can begin to loot new Valor points so you can get that new shiny armor. This wasn’t mentioned but even a blind man can foretell this: there will always be two armor sets released a high end one and a low end one or maybe the old Valor set will be purchased after the release of the new set with Hero points.We’ll come back to you WoW fans with some Cataclysm class guides in the following days.

Blizzard has released another information for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm today. They’ve revealed the new abilities and changes coming to five player classes.

You can find the full previews for the Mage, Druid, Hunter, Rogue, and Death Knight on the official WoW forums. The new class abilities include a Heroism-like spell called “Time Warp” for Mages and a “Smoke Bomb” for Rogues that shields against ranged attacks. At level 85, hunters get “Camouflage” which is essentially an in-combat stealth mode.

Death Knights’ tanking is undergoing a major revision, and Blizzard felt the need to write up another forum post specifically addressing that issue. Instead of spreading tanking talents throughout different talent trees, they’re going to be moved to the “Blood” tree to make that the tanking spec.

Over the past two days, Blizzard also released previews for the Shaman, Warrior, Priest, and Warlock classes. Paladins are said to be “deep in development” and as such, information on their Cataclysm capabilities won’t be available until next week.

wow cataclysm path of the titans

Here’s all the information you need to know about Path of the Titans before the WoW Expansion comes out later this year.
WoW Cataclysm Path of the Titans

As you will have read in our last article WoW Cataclysm Archaeology, there will be a new secondary profession in Azeroth when the new expansion comes out. This profession will allow all players to find and uncover secrets which have been unearthed after the cataclysmic event which has destroyed much of Azeroth.

The glyphs that will be created by players, as well as the discoveries that they will uncover will eventually lead to them beginning a questline which, at level 85 (max level), will mean that every player will be able to customize his player’s history and style more and more. But what are these questlines? They are the Path of the Titans!

Each quest line or Path will lead to a number of quests and tasks for players. These paths the quests in WoW Cataclysm can unlock not only items and rewards, but also changes to your skills and talents. It will be a fully fledged top-level customization process, and everyone will be able to choose to be different. It is Blizzard’s plan that there will be fewer and fewer ‘clone’ builds between the same class in WoW Cataclysm, and more and more individuality and expressionism.

Each of the paths has an interesting name, which I will list here simply for information’s sake. The path of the titans lore will be very interesting to follow, as each path will be linked to a different hero! These heroes are:

Aman’Thul: The High Father , Golganneth: The Thunderer, Eonar: The Lifebinder, , Aggramar: The Avenger, Khaz’Goroth: The Shaper and Norgannon: The Dreamweaver. We can only imagine the different possibilities which each Path of Titans will open for players of Warcraft, and each class and race will be able to analyse and choose their own story related to their strengths, racials and desires.

That’s all the Path of the Titans in WoW Cataclysm info we have right now, but keep checking back (or RSS us) for more info as it comes out!

Burning with desire to slip into the Cataclysm beta test, grab a goblin or worgen and run wild? Not these players. We asked readers to tell us why they do or do not want to participate in Cataclysm beta testing — and while plenty affirmed their beta aspirations with desperately ardent pleas, we found ourselves more intrigued by the reasoning of those who said they weren’t interested. Why would they pass up this opportunity of a gaming lifetime? What could they possibly hope to be doing for fun, instead? Read on to hear the opinions of three players on why, when it comes to Cataclysm beta testing, they will be opting out.

Using beta to create buzz

Beta tests are like a shiny, seductive piece of candy left in a painfully conspicuous place. Once we become aware that it exists, our desire for it almost overwhelms our good senses. We run in circles trying to find someone with a spare beta key, an easily winnable contest, or if we’re truly desperate, we hit eBay. Beta tests, like that piece of candy, are so tempting that we fail to ask important questions like “Why does this exist?” or “Why is there a box with a string attached over this?”

Why it’s there is simple enough. Blizzard, like many video game developers, seems to have realized the utility and liability inherent in beta testing. If they provide their beta testers with a noticeably glitchy or broken build, word will get out that the new expansion is terrible, broken, unplayable or worse. Small problems become magnified in the buzz, and one bad beta test can potentially sink an otherwise promising release. However, if the developers give their testers a well designed, fully functioning build of the game, then what’s being tested? That’s where the strings come in.

In the twenty-first century, a video game beta test is less an actual test than an interactive publicity stunt. Remember the Wrath beta and the fantastic stories you heard from the first of your friends to get in? And how near the end it felt like everyone but you had a key? What modern beta testers see is a mostly complete version of the final build. These testers aren’t so much testing as they are marveling, oohing and aahing and providing fuel for gamer gossip and the gaming media.

The only real testing beta testers do comes towards the end of the beta cycle: the dreaded stress test phase. This is when beta invites start going out en masse, seeming to blacken the skies of the internet with their multitudes. For a tester who thus far has been nothing but wowed and intrigued by the polished product they’ve been experiencing, stress tests are nothing but a teeth-clenching nightmare. Imagine the launch night of a major expansion, only worse. You’ll disconnect. NPCs will behave erratically. You’ll enter the very instance you’re trying to stress test, only to find yourself somewhere under the Stonetalon Mountains with no way back to the raid. These tests generate some of the most important data for developers but are nothing short of torturous for testers who have no bugs to report that aren’t already being reported by the 6,000 other players experiencing them simultaneously.

Of course, it does get worse. After all your fun of running around in new content and then the agony of stress tests, the game launches, your beta character gets deleted and you no longer possess any mystical new knowledge of the expansion that anyone who reads WoW.com and has access to Wowhead doesn’t already have.

Still, that candy does look enticing, doesn’t it? — G. Chad Peters

Devouring the facts, savoring the experience

My name is Casey Monroe, but some of you may recognize me as Malgayne from Wowhead.com. When WoW.com sent out their call to arms for submissions on the topic of beta participation a few days back, I jumped at the chance — after all, it was a topic that I had been hoping to post about on our own blog for some time.

I’m in sort of a unique position to answer this question, because in fact I’ve been in every beta since The Burning Crusade — whether I wanted to be or not. I’m lucky enough to have managing the content on Wowhead as my full-time job, which means that even if I didn’t love WoW, I’d still be in there, learning as much as I could about the new material.

But if I had to choose … now that’s a good question.

I’m at best a casual raider. I was head of a guild in BC that raided Karazhan, and that was about it. We eventually dissolved into a larger guild, which enabled me to see SSC a few times. In Wrath, my performance was even more shameful — I’ve been in Naxx and ToC, but that’s about all. I have a ton of alts, and I flit between too many different games at a time to really perfect a single character; I suppose I just have a short attention span. I’m by no means a hardcore WoW player, so the appeal of beta testing cutting-edge, new content has always been lost on me. So that’s out.

But the other aspect of all this is the fact that I’m an authoritarian. I like to play by the rules. And when I’m experiencing the content that the Blizzard team has laid out for me, I like to experience the content in the manner they intended.

With a game like WoW, this is remarkably difficult. There’s no clear, single path through the game, after all. If you skip a quest, you might be breaking an important chain … but if you don’t skip any quests, then you’re going to be over-leveled for the content, which also alters the experience. Sometimes I would find myself saving up XP and then skipping entire zones — and that doesn’t even get into the issue of trying to fit instancing in there (a topic which I talked about some time ago in another editorial).

So with all these things in mind, well, no … I don’t think I would choose to be in the beta if I didn’t have to be. I like to understand all about the new systems in advance, to be sure — what the stats mean, what the new abilities do, how the new emblems are going to work. But the quests, the story, the flavor … all these are things I want to experience, not as a sneak peek or a leak or a preview but as a game. — Casey Monroe

What I’ll be doing instead

I will not be playing the beta. In my four years of World of Warcraft addiction, I have never once felt the impulse to set my virtual foot inside any beta content, and I have still managed to level and raid and navigate new zones perfectly fine without it. Granted, I am aware that I owe my ease of discovery to the convenience of Wow.com and other informative websites, and thus indirectly to the hard work and diligent reporting of thousands of beta testers worldwide. To those tireless folk: I salute you. Thank you for your willingness to report bugs, endure unfinished landscapes and sacrifice months of work on a ‘toon, only to start again at launch with the rest of us.

However, if you think that just because I didn’t opt in for beta I’ll be lounging on a beach with a mojito until Cataclysm is released, you’re wrong. In fact, I will be spending my limited hours in WoW working very hard — and the gain to my character will be permanent. Here is what I will be doing during the beta period:

* Saying goodbye to four years of memories in the old world zones. Flying over Stranglethorn Vale for the first time in the zeppelin, seeing unexpected lushness … Standing as a ghost in Silithus, in awe of the gates of AQ opening event … Ganking and being ganked at the docks of Auberdine … Even as the expansions sent me farther away from Azeroth, I knew I could always come back for the strong feelings of nostalgia I knew I could get when I entered Ashenvale or Eastern Plaguelands. Alas, these places will never be the same.

* Finishing up endangered achievements and grinding endangered items. Though we have no official confirmation of which ones will be removed or sent to Feat-of-Strength Land, I am not going to take a chance on missing out on achievements and items I’ve been meaning to get for so long. I will be finishing Loremaster and trying to get Baron Rivendare’s mount, the ZG mounts, the Ravasaur pets and the epic recipe for Dirge’s Kickin’ Chimeric Chops.

* Saving gold. If two expansions have taught me anything, it’s that it really helps to have a gold buffer. (Knowing Blizzard, they’ll charge us a bundle to be able to fly in Azeroth.)

* Working on my PVP gear set. With the advent of rated battlegrounds awarding arena points, I might actually be able to buy gear that’s competitive in both battlegrounds and casual arena. I’m really looking forward to the new PvP system.

* Warning players of the cataclysm to come. I’ll be the one with the REPENT, THE END IS NEAR sandwich board in a city near you.

My not-so-gentle Spiritual Guidance readers, I have a confession to make. I’m filled with hate.

I hate cats. I hate Hummel figurines. I hate trifling gnome Wilfred Fizzlebang. I hate the taste of whatever brand ketchup they use at McDonalds. Lots and lots of hate. Oh, if only there were a way to channel this magnificent … shadowy hatepower.

Ask and ye shall receive, my brethren! Not from me, mind you — from Blizzard. (I mostly just give out shadow priesting knowledge with the occasional nod to pop culture.) This week, Spiritual Guidance is tackling the changes to the shadow priest spec that currently exist within the Cataclysm alpha. If you’re adamant on being surprised and don’t want anything spoiled, I recommend you stop reading now and instead invest your time in the following YouTube video. I feel it provides a respectable alternative.

But if you want to take your loathing for the formulaic CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men and channel it into a spiritual agent of death, and you just can’t wait until later this year to find out how … follow me past the break.

A ghostly aspect of our shadowy hatepower

For all the bitching and moaning that we do sometimes, shadow priest damage is actually pretty respectable right now. I definitely want that damage-dealing ability to keep pace in Cataclysm. But besides that, the main thing I want is a new ability or talent that makes me sit up and take notice. We don’t know if it’ll last through past the alpha or beta stages, but I think we finally have one: Shadowy Apparition. It takes the place of Misery on our talent tree.

Shadowy Apparition

While moving or dealing damage with Shadow Word: Pain, you will sometimes summon a Shadow version of yourself which will slowly move towards a target which is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain. Once reaching that target, it will instantly deal damage equal to 15/30/45% of your Mind Blasts’ damage.

Commenter Hollow Leviathan describes the talent as “a ghostly aspect of your shadowy hatepower” that “consume(s) the life energy of your opponents.” In other words: awesome.

Aside from the visual appeal, the talent would insert a few new variables into the game for shadow priests. First, it appears that the damage we do would now be (at least slightly) contingent on how far we are from our target. This is something new for us — our current spells don’t require travel time the way a shaman’s Lightning Bolt does, for example.

Also interesting is the “while moving” part of the tooltip. How movement will factor into the talent, I’m not so sure, but if it provides a net benefit on a movement-heavy fight, I’m all for it. It also puts a little bit more power and interest behind Shadow Word: Pain, which became a somewhat forgettable and weak background DoT in Wrath.

I wasn’t entirely thrilled that Misery was being removed from the Shadow tree, but they exceeded expectations with this one. I hope it makes it to the live servers. Even if it’s not some kind of massive damage meter-breaking ability, it’d be nice to have another Fox Van Allen around the house, even if he doesn’t do much aside from blowing people up.

The ever-changing hit rating and hope for the off-spec

We already know that major changes are coming to hit ratings in Cataclysm. In March, we learned about Blizzard’s plans to let shaman convert spirit to hit as a deep-tree talent. This past week we learned that, if the new tooltip for Twisted Faith is any indication, shadow priests are getting the same treatment.

Twisted Faith

Increases your spell power by 20% of your total Spirit, and Your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 2/4/6/8/10% if your target is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain, and increases your spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 4/8/12/16/20% of your Spirit.

First off, this should be great news for those lost souls who wander aimlessly in the light — their conversion to the dark side is that much easier. Healing gear doesn’t have hit on it? No problem — your shadow tree has you (at least partially) covered.

Another piece of good news: So long as that talent remains in place, those of us who still have spirit in our gear can breathe easy when Cataclysm hits. Ideally, we’ll be going into our first level 85 raid with gear from the new expansion, but we won’t be helpless if we quest and run dungeons in old Wrath gear that’s itemized for healers.

Here’s where things get a bit sketchy, though: Spirit Tap and Improved Spirit Tap still exist in the shadow tree unchanged. This means there are two possible scenarios: (1) Blizzard is setting the hit cap high enough that they don’t expect us to reach it through gear alone, making the concept of a hit rating that fluctuates with time acceptable, or (2) the Spirit Tap talents are in line for a makeover.

Frankly, the second scenario strikes me as the most likely. When the changes for Cataclysm were first announced, I hypothesized that Spirit Tap would be changed to a straight mana regen talent, and I still think that will be preferred by designers over a wildly fluctuating hit rating for shadow priests. Still, you can’t quite rule out a new approach to hit. We’re already used to spellpower, crit and haste fluctuating with time, so perhaps it’s not unreasonable to expect hit rating to fluctuate too.

More about Shadow Orbs and mastery

There’s a little shuffling going on in the talent tree, and Shadow Focus was a casualty, as expected. To make up for its absence, you can get Shadow Weaving sooner (now level 15). I like that change, because it gives Shadow even more of an early boost over the holy tree as far as dealing damage is concerned. (Don’t tell anyone — especially Dawn — but as a low-level, Wrath-era leveling priest, I’d be sorely tempted to grab Searing Light and Divine Fury.)

So, we need to put a new talent in our tree to make up the gap. Here’s what we’re getting:

Empowered Shadow Orbs

Increases the damage done by your shadow orbs by 2/4/6% and you have an h% chance to gain a Shadow Orb when critically hit by any attack.

Alright, that’s not very exciting. We knew we were getting Shadow Orbs. But a quick look at the tooltip hints that we’ve finally got a “first draft” of what these new spheres of doom will do — flat damage. Digging deeper, a datamined tooltip sheds some more light on the darkness, so to speak:

Shadow Orb

The priest is surrounded by Shadow Orbs, stacking up to 0 times. When the priest casts Mind Blast or Mind Spike, all Shadow Orbs are consumed, each increasing the spell damage done.

What does this tell us? While I doubt Blizzard is done playing around with the concept of Shadow Orbs (and further, the zero is obviously a placeholder), they’ve at least settled on an initial mechanism of what looks to be burst-type damage. That’s no surprise — burst damage seems to be a priority in the Cataclysm design of the shadow priest class. Don’t like it? Blame PvPers.

There’s one last tidbit of information about our new mastery mechanic that’s now known — where these orbs come from. The unearthed the shadow priest mastery tooltip reads:

Increases all spell damage done by a percentage.

Increases your spell critical strike chance by a percentage.

Gives a chance for your Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay spells to grant you a Shadow Orb each time they deal damage. Also increases the damage bonus to Mind Flay and Mind Spike granted by Shadow Orbs by a percentage.

The important stuff is at the end, of course. In the alpha build, we generate Shadow Orbs through our normal DPS activities — SW:P and Mind Flay. There’s something a little boring about that. It’s not really a neat new mechanic so much as it is something we won’t even notice. Orbs get generated during our normal rotation. Orbs get consumed during our normal rotation. Nothing changes except for a small boost of damage here and there. Maybe we’ll have to duel before raid bosses to build up orbs the way warlocks duel to build up Soul Shards.

A small boost of damage that’s going to be balanced and put on even level with the damage output of all the other hybrid classes. Yawn.

Mind Spike: A terrible threat

Finally, let’s take a look at what mysteries have been uncovered in our new offensive spell, Mind Spike.

Mind Spike

Blasts the target for 992 to 1048 Shadowfrost damage, and causes 31% of the damage up to 2182 to be frozen in the target’s mind for 12 sec. Mind Blast on the target will trigger any frozen damage instantly. The trigger effect causes a high amount of threat.

At first, I had figured that Mind Spike would be unspammable due to a high mana cost, though that’s not necessarily the case — its cost is “only” 17% of your base mana. Instead, we’ll be prevented from spamming Mind Spike via the threat meters. That’s fine in theory, but we’d be prevented from using burst damage on newly spawned adds in instances and raids, which may limit its usefulness. We’ll have to see how this one works on the live servers.

That sick spike in damage when that subsequent Mind Blast hits, unleashing the frozen damage and consuming a shadow orb … that’s going to be awesome. I love big, five-digit numbers.

Overall, the alpha has a definite hit in Shadowy Apparition (so far as I’m concerned) and a miss when it comes to Shadow Orbs. That’s fine — we’re looking at the first draft here, so to speak. Still, I’m getting more and more excited for what’s coming down the road. So bring it on, Two and a Half Men — we could all use that extra hatepower for Cataclysm.

Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast.

Back at the beginning of April, we were treated to the Cataclysm preview for all of the classes. Many people were excited, some were disappointed, but everyone had news to digest. This past week has seen the Cataclysm friends and family alpha start and since then, we have seen a plethora of leaks: everything from images of the changes to old zones and new instances up to some data-mined information about female worgen. Needless to say, it has been a pretty busy week.

This last week has also seen a lot of discussion about the leaked talent trees as they are in the alpha now. I thought now would be a good time to take a break from boss talks to talk about what we know so far about the shaman talent trees and maybe find out your opinions on them as well.

The information in the link above is leaked and is in no way official. If you are waiting for an official release or don’t want to see any potential spoilers, don’t click the link. Otherwise let us take a look at some of the potential changes.

When I first looked at the leaked restoration talent tree, I was a bit surprised. I had expected more restructuring and more changes than we we currently see. As with everything though, this will be subject to change. This is leaked information, it may not be 100% accurate and even if it is, we are still in an alpha phase. Things will change, and until Blizzard says that things are final and presents them to us, it is best to keep an open mind when looking at the information.

What we know so far

* Some of the talents have been moved around.

* Tidal Mastery has been removed.

* Thundering Strikes has been removed.

* Cleanse Spirit has been removed as a talent. The talent is now Improved Cleanse Spirit and allows for the removal of magic effects from friendly targets.

* Ancestral Knowledge has been changed. Instead of increasing intellect by 10% at max rank, it now increases maximum mana by 15%.

In place of Tidal Mastery, a new talent has popped up, Focused Insight.

Focused Insight

Rank 5/5

Requires 15 points in Restoration talents

After casting any shock spell, your next heal’s mana cost is reduced by 75% of the cost of the shock spell, and its healing effectiveness is increased by 25%

An interesting replacement for what used to be 5% crit rating. A few people have commented to me that they think this is purely a PvP talent. Looking at it though, I can’t help but see the potential for PvE. As it stands now, Riptide increases the healing effectiveness of Chain Heal by 25% when it is cast on the a player with Riptide on them. One would assume that these could potentially stack, allowing for even larger chain heals, but also this can be used for larger Healing Waves and, in Cataclysm, larger Greater Healing Wave. I can also see this talent playing very nicely with Tidal Force, and even Shamanistic Focus could begin finding its way into talent specs. The other part of it that really interests me is the mana reduction component. While it is true that in order to activate the talent you have to cast a shock of some kind, it could still potentially be useful. Think of some of the fights now like Festergut where you can find yourself placing a Flame Shock on the boss as you run in. This can help you recover some of the mana spent placing the DoT on the target. It also was not so long ago when we had boss fights in which we had to interrupt abilities with shocks as well, and that may see a comeback. Keep in mind, Blizzard has stated they wanted to make mana more of a commodity, and something like this can go a long way to help in fights where you are forced to do something else and could potentially have an impact on 5-man content for us as well.

Another new addition to the restoration toolbox is Ancestral Resolve.

Ancestral Resolve

Rank 2/2

Requires 25 points in Restoration talents

Reduces damage taken while casting spells by 10%

People have told me that this one feels like a purely PvP talent as well, but again, I can see the potential for PvE here. There are a lot of fights where there is a ton of environmental damage going around in both raids and heroics. Reducing the damage we take can be quite helpful for a few reasons. Taking damage forces us to focus on our own health as much as the group we are healing. While it should not be the case, diverting our attention from our healing targets even momentarily can sometimes result in their deaths. A lot of healers also suffer from tunnel vision. Sometimes we become so focused on the fight or our healing targets that we do not pay enough attention to our own health. Giving us a few more seconds to keep healing our targets or to realize we are dangerously close to killing ourselves can go a long way. Think of how useful this would be in a fight like Sindragosa, where you may find yourself standing in harm’s way to heal tanks. We already have Healing Focus to help reduce pushback from damage; having another ability that passively helps us heal while taking damage could be quite helpful.

So far, we have not seen any mention of talents that help augment the newly renamed Greater Healing Wave or Healing Rains. There has also been no mention of Spirit Link in the talents. Blizzard had previously mentioned a desire to bring Spirit Link back, but has not yet specified in what capacity they were going to try it.

Speculation

While it is true that this is still early information at best, I suspect we are going to see a few things happen from here. First, I think that there will be actual consolidation within the tree. Currently, many of the talents we have already come to know and love are still there. They have stated that they want to add more fun, flavorful talents to the tree and fewer must-have talents, but as it stands right now, I am still seeing a lot of must-haves. With the importance of mana conservation, I am also wondering if we will see more talents changed to include some form of mana conservation or reduction in mana cost for spells.

I find the removal of 10% crit from talents falls in line with what Blizzard has said about reducing the overall healing numbers. They want it to feel more interesting and hectic in some ways. Reducing the amount of crit available to us from talents will play into this by reducing our overall healing output. This also affects any of our talents such as Ancestral Healing and Ancestral Awakening that directly benefit from a higher crit rating. Later in the expansion we may see this loss of crit compensated for with gear, but that is yet to be addressed.

So what do you think so far? What type of talents would you like to see Blizzard add to the restoration tree? What talents would you like to see them remove or consolidate? As more information becomes available, we will keep you posted and up to date. Remember to check back often.