Isn't vampiric embrace going raid-wide? Perhaps the lack of small heals will be counteracted by constant raid-wide healing of a shadow priest, or with the new improved scaling judgment of light. It may be that blizzard is trying to create a situation where healers only need to heal the people who are really hurting, in which case a max rank heal will be appropriate, and just let the slightly injured folks heal through the improved raid-wide healing effects of various classes.

That's not necessarily true. Stat consolidation does two things: it helps both tanks and healers do more damage for solo content (and while not needed as a main tank), and it reduces loot rot. As far as I can tell none of the changes made so far indicate a desire on Blizzard's part to reduce the total amount of gear you need to collect in order to specialize for certain encounters.

Here's an interesting thought: if we're headed back to the days of pre-BC cast cancel healing, to at least some degree, maybe we're also headed back to more avoidance based tanking as well. For the most part, I remember WoW 1.X tanking to be more of a game of 'who can best trivialize/avoid the damage dealt' moreso than the BC model of 'who can best survive the damage' and would welcome a shift back towards that mentality as it would require more active participation from tanks (they don't just have to spam their highest threat abilities but also need to manage incoming damage to a larger degree than I felt occurred in the pieces of BC raiding that I've seen).

My big problem with multiple gear-sets has been the degree to which it impacts different classes differently.

If you're a druid who wants to excel at all aspects of your class, including tanking, how many gear sets do you need? Include resist sets. Now, what about if you're a hunter?

I think making things so most classes can get away with one gear set most of the time, but players who want to excel in various situations or various roles will collect multiple gear sets, regardless of class -- that's a good balance to strike. Sure, druids are a crazy case and will still need more, but to a lesser extent than before. Giving other classes more reasons to collect multiple gear sets, without requiring it, is just a win all around IMO.

I don't know how to do the same thing for rouges. If there's a way to make it so that one gearset is higher DPS but lower combo point generation, and another gearset is lower DPS but higher combo point generation, and you've got situations where you want to use combo points for something other than DPS... I don't know. Rogues really are such one-trick ponies (in my experience, anyhow, and I'll be the first to admit I'm not great at rogues).

The only spells that benefit from this are spells with a reduced cast time at low ranks that have some kind of effect. For healers, every type has a "fast heal" of some kind that will surpass the healing done by another spell ranked low enough to have the same cast time. Healing spells like low ranked healing wave / heal will cost more than and heal less than lesser healing wave and flash heal.

Players currently use fear, sheep, and roots rank 1 due to reduced mana cost in pvp, since CC duration is capped at 10 seconds. Some spells, like lightning bolt rank 1, despite having the ability to cast at 1.5 seconds before talents at rank 1, do such a small amount of damage with no useful effect as to be negligible in any situation. Instant cast spells like shadow word pain, which can proc blackout, will simply have to be used at max rank.

Other spells, like starfire and chain heal, have the same cast time on their lowest ranks as their maximum ranks.

I'm going to try to make a list of every ability a caster would ever use a low rank of in either pvp or pve:

Frostbolt: rank 1 1.0 cast talented (guaranteed snare, chance of root, primarily pvp usage)
Fireball: rank 1 1.0 cast talented (guaranteed dot on rogues and impact procs, though I doubt mages actually use it for this)
Nature's Grasp: any lower rank than max (otherwise it can't be overwritten by a roots cast due to "more powerful spell active", this is arguably a bug)
Shadowbolt: rank 1 1.0 cast talented (10% daze chance / 20% improved shadow damage after a crit - currently no PvP warlock that picks up either talent would ever use rank 1, and useless in pve).

The only non-heal, non-cc spell that I've ever seen a caster use in pvp or pve at rank 1 is Frostbolt. The other abilities I could think of that have low cast times on low ranks really don't present enough of a benefit to be used, ever.

If multiple ranks of spells are removed, the only non-healer class that will really be penalized is the mage, and then, only in very specific situations. However, spell books will be much nicer looking .

I've got to disagree with this, but only slightly. Demoralizing shout and thunderclap provide more melee mitigation than almost any amount of gear, and I still see many tanks that are simply inattentive and fail to keep these debuffs up, resulting in much higher damage taken. In addition, tanks currently have 3 abilities or cooldowns that can help them survive if they notice a spike in incoming damage: Last stand, Shield Wall and Healthstone. There are other creative uses of game mechanics to control incoming damage, like intervening a far-away player to kite the boss on some fights or briefly stopping attacks to prevent parry gib.

Other classes don't have anything as interactive or "clutch" as warriors for tanking in BC. However, we've seen a large amount of these types of abilities given to other classes in wotlk, so we should see a lot more interactive "tanking" (as opposed to holding aggro) from every class, beyond a simple threat rotation and lack of cooldowns that druids and paladins currently have.

Edit: gramamr

To your list add AoEs of all stripes (consecration, arcane explosion, hellfire, holy nova, etc) used at low ranks in PvP to break stealth.

Also, mages often don't even train frost nova past rank 1 in live; frost nova's snare is just as good at rank 1 as it is at max rank, and the additional damage at max rank is not worth the mana cost.


EDIT: It's admittedly a fringe case, but I use rank 1 regrowth for the summoned boss in Sethekk Halls, where HoTs on the bird statues buff the party.

Also to kill snake trap snakes or knock people off flags.

A low-mana, non-damaging Air Shock interrupt would be nice for shaman as a replacement for Rank 1 Earth Shock, as the damage component causes a lot of the cost. Even so, a resto shaman will have a ton of spellpower and be able to do a bit of damage with the interrupt, so it's not a total loss. Rank 1 Drain Soul is used by every warlock but having to use max rank is hardly the end of the world.

Clearly it's going to impact the best healers in the game the most, but it simply means the healing game will be different and probably more transparent, not necessarily any worse. Considering that the "average" healer heals reactively and doesn't down rank, it won't really affect them at all, and the best healers that downrank now will simply find a new way to excel.

This is purely for mana efficiency though, which is why I didn't add it in. We might as well add in rank one moonfire, rank one shadow word pain for blackout procs, etc. Rank 1 regrowth takes the same amount of time to cast as max rank in the current beta build, hence there is no reason to cast it instead of the maximum rank and it can be safely taken out of the spellbook to clean it up.

If mana efficiency is indeed removed from the equation, then all spells except the ones I listed can have their lower ranks removed from the game without negatively impacting anyone in any way. This was the point from a previous poster I was trying to substantiate and clarify.

I couldn't provide anything more than raw speculation as to the meaning of these screen shots. No matter the story, however, they are exciting to even think about.

What I'm going to say now is going to make you feel a lot less excited. What's currently happening is that something is buggy about the icons that get drawn on the map; the grave marker for where you die is also split into four separate smaller icons now.

What I guess is changed is that they've added town markers to all "depths" of map but the icon drawing code is bugged at the moment.

Well, great. Thanks a lot. Way to ruin everything.

So essentially this change isn't about us down casting a few ranks. Its about PvP and preventing certain tactics which relied on secondary effects by using rank one. The more I look at this change the more it points to a change made to change behavior in Arenas and BGs. Too many people get highly offended by the use of Earth Shock 1 or similar to eat totems, impart dots, etc. I am not sure about the overall effect on PvE outside of instance play, downtime increase?

For my mage it gives weight to going back to 18/0/43 or running Mage Armor more often. Combine this change with potion sickness and I need to really give a lot more consideration to regeneration. Looking at Frost Nova as example, where I can use it the difference untalented is 130 mana. That is not horrible, I rarely need to get two off and even then I usually snap to do them. However stack refreshing is far easier on the move with a level one frost bolt unless Ice Lance can refresh the Winter's Chill. Yet what did I really lose? The low level snare at minimal cost if I PvP. With Earth Shock, where it can be used in PvE instances the only reason I would not use max rank is if I was on the cusp of threat but those are so rare.

The only character for me that is affected the most would be my priest. I do down rank simply because it can be overkill otherwise. I have two of each on my bar for the most part just for situational needs. Top offs might be less frequent. At most it will be the mental retraining of those taking the damage and expecting spamming of heals that will be hardest, they will have to be comfortable with a few less hits compared as before, the heal will come on time but a few will be nervous

Normally I'm fully for the "PvP Reasons" brigade but honestly downranking has been something Blizz have disliked for a long time and it has significant downsides in PvE in quite a large area from a non-biased stand point (ie the ones beyond "zomg this nerfs me personally at this moment in time").
For the good of the game this needed to be done (along with potion changes).

Couldn't agree more, but wasn't Potion Sickness retracted?

Very cool.

One thing that occurs to me, and not sure if it's been discussed, but this shifts a bit more responsibility onto the shoulders of DPS classes to keep fights short. The more realistic it is that a healer can /oom the more necessary it is that DPS get stuff done fast. In live it seems more that DPS is playing against an enrage timer, not the healers mana.

warning: non-serious/joke post

We have so far avoided the most burning question about WotLK - to whit:

Will Gnomes make it into the cinematic for this expansion?

And if not, why not? Every race bar gnomes has made it (admittedly, the Troll sequence was short, but it was present). Are Blizzard ashamed of gnomes?

Everyone in the alliance is.

"If mana efficiency is indeed removed from the equation, then all spells except the ones I listed can have their lower ranks removed from the game without negatively impacting anyone in any way..."

I'm not sure why you are so dismissive of the Rank 1 AOE spam. It's been a bastardization of PVP for a long time and I can say as a stealth class I'm not going to miss its departure from the game. It's used by every single PVP mage constantly to negate the rogue's lone advantage -- opening combo -- at essentially no cost. And rank 1 shadow word: pain is not used only for blackout/misery but also to decoy people into needless cleansing. These are arguably not "real" strategies but instead artifacts of the long spellbook.

Somehow being able to spend 60 mana on a rank 1 spell that can stun your opponent for 3 seconds in PVP seems a lot less clever than intelligently using Greater Heal 3 to extend your mana pool to heal a tank for 10 minutes. Clearly the baby is going out with the bath water. That's not necessarily the end of the world, so long as other balancing issues are taken care of. But that said, the very reason my priest can run a 5-man without drinking is that I can right size my spells with my current gear level (and was able to do so a gear level or so ago). I'm not sure how nerfing that is a big win. But then again. I haven't seen mana regen at lvl 80 either.

Ahem, this is CC use.

You can also add Earth Shock and Frost Shock to the list. They do less damage, cost less mana, but interrupt/snare is the same. Also, rank 1 heals are used to stack Healing Way or to start combat with Inspiration/Ancestral Fortitude on the tank (yea yea, last one is not really that useful, but it's a nice touch).

The topic here isn't downranking now but downranking in Wrath though. There will be no reason to rank 1 AoE when it costs the same or more than higher ranks and does almost no damage, no reason to use rank 1 shocks when they cost the same as but do far less damage than the max ranks.

Really, the only spell that will still have a purpose at rank 1 is frostbolt, because higher ranks have a longer cast time, not just a increased mana cost, and the lower ranks retain the snare. I'll gladly spend 500 mana for 30 damage if it means I cast in 1.5 seconds instead of the normal 3. It beats getting my face bashed in while I wait for it to finish.