The whole point is that sockets correspond to certain things.

Blue = endurance (stam, mana regen)
Red = throughput (damage, healing, attack power)
Yellow = modifiers (crit, hit, haste)

At the very least Expertise is red, which helps out (warrior) tanks who before didn't have much use for them, though with the new changes strength seems like it'll be good for tanks anyway. Also, there's a lot more combination of hybrid gems, so you'll be able to choose what you take along with your stam if you socket blue. I don't see them ever adding in any kind of 'damage' or 'healing' stats as blue though, it would just destroy the whole point of socket colours in the first place.

Think of it from a Tank point of view, rather than one of a DPSer.

Has there been any word or sign of new relic slot items? I am wondering if they will continue to be very situational items in Wrath or if they will be brought more in line with other range slot items. I would not be upset at all to see the relic slot item just become a stat item that all 3 hybrid classes could use (basically similar to bows, wands, etc just not able to shoot). Or just let Shamans, Druids, and Paladins use normal ranged items with them being able to chose between wands or shooting / thrown type items based on the type of stat they want.

Given that Death Knights will be getting their own relic (blue quested one gave +50 to Blood Strike, IIRC), I doubt they'll try to do that anywhere soon.

Sad to hear that. I was hoping to see the very narrow use items phased out since they are some of the more obnoxious things to have drop or not drop from a boss (depending on whether or not someone still wants that item).

Relics are here to stay in their current forms. As far as I know Blizzard likes the mechanic. I'd personally love some static stat relics, or at least the relics being more like a third class exclusive trinket slot, say some combination of passive stats with something based on an ability. A particular issue is that for tanking and dps specs the relics typically affect abilities which you aren't using all the time, making them relatively weaker compared to healing based relics which typically affect a single ability as well, but you're more likely to use that ability the majority of the time while healing; that's not to say the design is perfect for healing either.

I'm definitely looking forward to combining my [Tome of the Lightbringer] with the new [Shield of Righteousness] ability when the time comes though.

I'm kind of wondering what they'll do with [Libram of Souls Redeemed] with the removal of Blessing of Light however.

Hopefully they'll make a token system for relics, and have like wands on it too, it's really annoying to see those Totems or Idols drop from a boss, especially when no one needs it. It's even worse when you know it's on the loottable, but no one will ever want it anyway, because of limited design(stuff buffing spells you don't use and all). One fine example is Resto druid idol. Best one, because of lifebloom usage, is the one dropping from Slabs first boss. Then again, the only epic healing idols drop from kara and SSC only, and both are pretty bad. Hell, if they're going to keep relics, they might as well remove them from raid loot tables, and just leave a few blue idols on 5man or soloable content, so you won't get frustrated. I mean, since they're going with more shared loot, relics end up in a really weird spot, since they can only be used by one class each, and in most cases by only one spec of that class too.

Relics are really good candidates for badge rewards. They're hyper-specialized, so tend to be frustrating as a raid drop. But I personally find the specialized nature of relics to be interesting, and worth playing with.

Another idea would be to make the relic drop an "extra" drop on a couple boss. I.E. If a normal boss drops 3 items, have a boss which drops 3 regular items + 1 relic all the time.

They also make a lot of sense as Rep Items; the Argent Crusade, frex, would logically have Pally and DK Relics on hand anyway. Linking them to Reputations, assuming that they play with Raid Reputations the way they have in the past, would keep them access limited but out of the drop tables.

I would rather have relics linked to quests, reputation, or given as a "freebie" part of the loot table: i.e. a boss drops x number of items with an additional roll to decide whether the relic drops as well.

Putting relics on the badge vendor means that hybrids have to expend more badges than pure classes (guns, bows, and wands all drop from bosses as well) and frequently hybrids will have to buy multiple relics in case they respec.

Edit: After thinking about it, I guess AQ event resetting is normal on a new server, since gates are closed. My bad, forgot about that. So deleted previous post ^^

That spell sounds more like a boss mechanic to me.

Judging by the rest of the spells listed under "Restore Mana" I think it is a potion, although it doesn't explicitly state it, the values for the lower ranks match up. Restore Mana - Spell - World of Warcraft

That's actually the spell ID for the Frost Mana Potion.

Considering that all of the Paladin Ret/Prot abilities cost a % of base mana, it won't be an issue whatsoever.
A very, very clever move by Blizzard. A fantastic step in the right direction.

It's just a crying shame that you can't *quite* achieve the "ideal" Paladin Tanking spec with the current Talent model.

If they swap Improved Blessing of Might with Deflection, we're in business.

% of base mana just means that the cost of the spell increases as you level. As it stands now, there will be a lot of mana issues for prot paladins soloing in particular, and the current "wait for me to drink" issues in 5 mans have no remedy thus far. Though of course, I'd rather they solve our more raiding oriented drawbacks first, and that appears to be the focus for the time being. Ret paladins seem to be in much better shape with Judgements of the Wise, though it's hard to tell until the current absurd judgement damage is fixed.

Finally, holy paladins certainly have a lot more options for healing, but an active ability for mana regeneration would go a long way to patching up any remaining issues with the class.
Considering a lot of these talents are essentially "fixes," for example, allowing threat to scale with warrior based gear(Touched by the Light), it IS a problem that you can't take everything you need without dropping things we had before. Certainly it's good to have options, but I'd rather the options be along the lines of "Would you rather minor in healing or damage, or pick up a bit of pvp utility?" instead of "How would you like to be suboptimal for your main role?"

It won't become less of a problem until you find yourself in 3-4 pieces of your tier set. Judging by BC experience most of the gear you wear as raiding protadin is shared with warriors, and as such has no Int whatsoever. This point is reinforced by Blizzard's intention of gear unification. Making 2-set bonus of T6 into DS4 seems like a good idea, but I don't want to see myself holding on two blue pieces for such a major utility bonus beyond T7 content.

Edit: I do think that Paladin-specific discussion should be moved to appropriate thread, though.

You realize that isn't an additive bonus? I can assure you that extra 1% is not really noticable.

Spiritual attunement is nice, but the requirement to have a healer is an awkward band-aid for a tanking class.
It's:
1. Fine in raid situations, because the incoming damage is usually high and steady enough to maintain a decent threat rotation, if not going all out.
2. Alright in 5 mans, where pulls generally don't last long enough to burn through an entire mana pool. That being said, it can be occasionally be difficult to not have to drink after a few pulls.
3. Non-existent in soloing, however efficiency with seal of wisdom and auto-attacking can make up for this, if you don't mind a bit of boredom and skipping quests and locations with caster mobs.
4. Completely problematic in small group content- say, outdoor questing. It's a pain to group with a friend and attempt to "tank" for them -- you can't just grind with wisdom, because the mobs will swiftly ignore you, and you can't really hold any threat unless you drink every other pull.

These are the current problems, but in WoTLK:
1. Abilities cost more.
2. Prot paladins seem to be expected to wear gear with no int.
3. Threat output will be balanced around active ability rotations, and not coasting on salvation. Further, it seems they are trying to get away from simple dps/tank/heal button spamming, so the whole state of prot paladin soloing being auto-attacking seems archaic.

The change to judgement will help a bit, and I'm glad blizzard is focused on getting each spec raid ready, then working from there -- but there does need to be something other than slapping a set bonus on some dungeon gear.

There are screenshots on mmo-champion of new alchemy recipes. Overall it's the same as the current pots, just an increase in value. The new Runic Mana Potion is 3240 to 5400 an average of 4320. This is a 80% increase compared to the 33% increase from Major to Super or a jump from 100 to 180mp5. BoW has gone from 41 to 91 however there is no new version of mana spring, leaving it at the untalented 50mp5 (but raidwide now).

I guess this goes together with the increase of mana cost of all spells, but probably leaves the "% of base mana cost" spells as the winners, which are usually cooldown abilities so its not really the biggest impact.

Except for the intended changes to certain speccs they seem to stick to the same pattern for the mana management aspect of the game.

As a side note, the new spellpower flask is finally filling the gap of a pure +heal flask, which is very long overdue. At least one purely beneficial effect of the gear merge. Also there is no evidence of any new spell school specific damage from what i've seen, no new shadow/frost/firepower elixirs or flask of pure death/blinding light and nothing on gear either (tailoring not yet known though).

I'd be really surprised if Blizzard made the same mistake with the spell school specific damage on tailoring sets as they did in TBC.

Blizzard admitted that the spell school tailored sets were a mistake, and that they learnt from it.

2/3 months into the expansion when 2.1 was on the PTR, they actually reduced the power stats them and increased the intellect(/stamina for FSW?) part.
They then reverted the change (no one likes their gear that they leveled a profession for made useless), and buffed raid loot by 15 ilvls since gear progression was between non-existant and backwards.

Even with this change the spellfire set for mages and shadowweave set for shadow priests can still compete with T6 gear if i were not for stamina and set bonuses.

The BoE spellfire set is also very powerful, but limited since it doesn't use spell school damage (and the hat has no meta gem).
The BoP leatherworking sets were not as well designed, not streamlined for performance. They competed with the first raid tier and were replaced in T5 zones, which is served its purpose pretty well. The tailored healing set was in a similar situation.

The only other mistuned crafted item I can think of was Stormherald, due to giving a unique bonus that you can't get on alternatives.


We're going to see some nice perks for having a profession - gathering professions getting a bonus as well to reduce the power advantage of "Raid with 25 Ench/LW", to make professions more a choice. See Tinnitus.

Spellfire/Shadowweave with school-specific damage on 3 pieces with power streamlining on stats won't come again.
Blizzard stated that it was a mistake and I think they're well aware of it.
Even green quest items are limited to 3 stats on them to limit their power.

The wording makes it sound like B was the result of A. :P I doubt the buff had anything to do with professions - Upgrades paths might as well have been completely nonexistant and gear with gem slots were shafted pretty hard pre-2.1.