Cataclysm Preview Thunks

Figured it would be reasonable to jot down a smattering of Things which strike me as interesting from the Cata previews, mostly pertaining to the classes and specs which I play with some regularity.


Shaman, Elemental

Earthquake - hell yes! I don't play Elemental well enough (or spec correctly ) to capitalise on the scary AoE Magma Totem + Fire Nova can potentially bring, and besides, I'm usually providing ToW for other, better casters. A cast or channelled ground-targeted AoE will make me extremely happy and it has delicious flavour and history. If it comes with some sort of snare or other useful debuff, double hooray!

Totem changes - adding a scaling version of the ToW/DP effect to all fire totems is lovely, especially combined with the proposed change to allow Searing (and potentially Magma!) Totem to operate or be dropped from a sensible range.

Mastery - Lightning Overload is great fun, and few things are as satisfying as firing off 'lusted Lightning Bolts like some kind of storm-powered magical Gatling, or hitting a clustered pack of mobs with a double-whammy of Chain Lightning. Adding the same kind of effect to Lava Burst and maybe shocks? Delicious!


Mage, Fire/Frost/Frostfire

Flame Orb/Wall of Fog - these make me really, really happy. And the reason is really, really absurdly geeky: they sound like D&D spells. They actually do something fun, in addition to their obvious making-things-hurt function. They let magi exert some control over the field of battle, especially in PvP, and I think that is incredibly good. Wall of Fog in particular strikes me as a fantastic way to cleanly bisect a group of melee, and I can imagine rolling Flame Orbs down tunnels in WSG. Frankly I don't care if these have a useful DPET on single target fights, they're flavourful and seem to reward inventive usage in a way few other Mage spells do.

Burnout - "AHAHAHA I'm burning myself alive but I'll take you with me! Everything must buuurn!" ::cough:: I may empathise with the crazy self-destructive fire mage a little too much sometimes.

Arcane Missiles, Deathfrost Mastery - Adding procs to low-level mage play? Hooray! Encouraging spells other than Frost Bolt? Hooray!

Time Warp - 'lust for another class is good, and it has a pleasantly mage-y 'time is my bitch' feel about it. Interesting to see how the personal movement speed boost turns out.


Druid, Restoration/Burr

Thrash - yay, a button that Is Not Swipe. With on-next-attacks buggering off, I'll be interested to see how these things go for burr tanking 'rotations'.

Stampeding Roar - odd, but fun. Chained with Dash and maybe Engineering boots (so tempted...) I'll be interested to see just how far a kitty can go whilst at Warp Factor Cat.

Restoration in general - HoTs scaling with more stats and health deficit, sounds great. Using Tranquility and Healing Touch, also great. Tree of Life as a cooldown, fantastic! I hate being in tree form - Roots, Cyclone and a bit of random DPS are fun things to do in many situations, and I want full usage of the druid spells to be the norm. Gimme an interrupt in caster form other than Cowstomp and healing Heroics could be (almost) as much fun as it is on my shaman.

Wild Mushroom - in relation to the above, I look forward to playing with this as resto-but-not-tree. It's a bit lot weird, but fun. Assuming it lasts for a good while after going invisible (absent instant detonation) this should make for some excellent PvP situations. In heroics, I guess plopping one of these down and then chain Hurricane on mob packs will be the norm when we get overgeared.


Misc Stuff I'm Even Less Qualified To Opine On, But Will Anyway

Warrior - from my point of view, possibly the most 'Meh' preview of all my active characters. Maybe, just maybe, Heroic Leap will be sufficiently fun to overrule this anyway.

Priest - Leap of Faith is lovely. Yes, griefing will happen. Yes, it will be funny sometimes and annoying at others. Yes, HoP/DI rotations on the tank, TotT/MD on a healer or a DPS taunting or a pet growling or people being daft already provide ample opportunity for griefing. I see this as no reason to ban interesting spells.

Hunters - focus looks really interesting, and fits the flavour of the class far more than mana in my opinion. Much joy on (a) having lots of pets and having them be viable and (b) being able to fill missing buff/debuff slots with a pet, albeit at reduced potency. This alone makes hunters an excellent addition to a ten man raiding guild. Yay.

Enhancement Shaman - I don't really care for all the crying over the third mastery bonus. I think it's a brave and interesting attempt to have the various spec bonuses different, which means they can't all be proc-y gimmicks that sound awesome. It's a boring bonus as written, but has the potential to allow for more valid ways of gearing, and for your Mastery rating stat to directly affect the way you play and spec your shaman. It may not work, but I'm glad it exists.

Rogue - me wants to bring Smoke Bomb to help bear tanks on tricky caster pulls. Also the self-HoT makes me want to level a subtlety rogue. Yes, I am easily influenced. I agree that the tanking cooldown is a bit daft for a class which already has plenty of exceptionally strong (if short) survival cooldowns, and significant problems with sustained metabolic viability outside those.