Rogue:

- Rogue mace spec has changed. The talent now grants 5% increased damage on criticals/5% chance to stun.
- Weapon Expertise grants 5/10 Expertise.
- Shadowstep remains the 41-point Sub talent.

Warrior:
- Sweeping Strikes has been buffed from 5 charges to 10 charges.

People keep glossing over the fact that we now have 5% more RANGED hit chance! I mean hell yes! er...
I'm waiting for the season changes to come up but so far I am not impressed. The weapons coming out of ZA so far are at best on par with s2 junk. Not to mention some of it lookes like someone jabbed some broken glass into a bundle of sticks. The new pvp cloak coming from badges is bad precedent. It's garbage compared to most of the kz level cloaks for dps and I have to farm badges for it? Joy.

Still no word on if new Devastate provides 402, 301, 101, or something completely different for bonus threat? The potential change on threat generation could be as much as 200-300 TPS (Difference from 402 to 101 bonus threat on Devastate), so it's relatively important information for Protection Warriors. Anyone who is able to do testing would be greatly appreciated.

So I finally got on the PTR (EU had some troubles....)

I log on and behold:






What is it with Blizzard and Shoulder sizes? I always wanted a bit bigger shoulder skins, but goddamn this is a bit much :P.

They look pretty good, I think!

You have Improved Amplify Magic, which is arguably just as important of a buff as Arcane Intellect. Now if only they'd make group versions of the buff for Gurtogg / Gruul / other fights with low magic damage...

The internet ate my post =(. v2.0:

From what I can see, the original class vision was that battle stance was a "vanilla" stance, essentially equivalent to no stance at all, but had to be programmed in as a separate stance (unlike druid forms) because of abilities that can be used in multiple stances. Arms was also meant to be the flexible and adaptible tree, not the battle-stance tree, while prot and fury specialized their playstyle for specific stances. There's really no reason why fury should have 10% AP in zerk stance rather than flat 10% AP, except that it's a zerk-stance tree. If arms is a flexible tree, it wouldn't have a stance-specific buff; it would have a general buff. Any buff it would have thought of giving just to battle stance, it instead gives to all three stances, which is a strict improvement.

Class visions and spec visions do change on occasion. Frost used to be the PvE raiding tree, Destruction used to be the PvP tree, Retribution used to be the solo grinding tree (and before that, The Tree), and survival used to be the melee tree. The major blow to this vision of the class was the movement of tactical mastery from arms to prot.
However aside from TM, I don't see arms moving away from this concept very much. Especially with the addition of improved intercept to the arms tree, unless the talent also makes it a battle stance ability (something people have been suggesting for years).

Improved Battle Stance would basically just be Improved Warrior, and somewhat analogous to Improved Caster Form for druids... on the other hand, improved caster forms do exist: they're called Oomkin and Treeform druids. Which would make for interesting analogous warrior concepts... perhaps the only realistic implimentation of Improved Battle Stance would be allowing certain not-battle-stance abilities to be used in battle stance, like intercept, disarm, and whirlwind. It would certainly make a better 41-point talent than endless rage, ya?

Just thought I'd try to bring some attention to the hunter's cast sequence issue: **edit: thread got deleted ** basically as it is now on the ptr, your standard autoshot-steadyshot macro is useless.

edit: Seems to be fixed.
edit2: Not fixed. Only presents for me with significant lag though.

Same thing with Gnome shoulders:




Another thing I noticed (and I'm sorry if it has been mentioned before, didn't find it) - I magically lost 0.4 crit on PTR in exactly the same gear & stats:



Anyone else notice this? Or am I totally overlooking something?

Haha, it wouldn't be the test realm if shoulders didn't get bugged somehow

Hint: You had +10 weapon skill before which was turned into expertise. And 0.4%/10 is a very familiar number

Would love to check shoulders as well, but can't get to copy

I just had a look through wowhead to see what I had to look forward to while certainly, possibly,maybe, levelling some of my alts when 2.3 goes live. A lot of the changes are nice stat upgrades, a few stam here and a few this and that there on things, some new drops.

But then I saw these changes ..


..............................................................

Earthslag Shoulders
Binds when picked up
Shoulder Plate
410 Armor
+13 Strength
+8 Stamina
+8 Intellect
Durability 80 / 80
Requires Level 47
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 9

Becomes ...

Earthslag Shoulders
Binds when picked up
Shoulder Plate
410 Armor
+13 Strength
+8 Stamina
Durability 80 / 80
Requires Level 47
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 13.

.......................................................................
and ..
.......................................................................

Spiderfang Carapace
Binds when picked up
Chest Plate
567 Armor
+14 Strength
+14 Stamina
+13 Intellect
Durability 135 / 135
Requires Level 49
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 13.


becomes ..


Spiderfang Carapace
Binds when picked up
Chest Plate
567 Armor
+19 Strength
+14 Stamina
Durability 135 / 135
Requires Level 49
Equip: Improves hit rating by 13

............................................................


This makes my level 49 paladin, (Bradamante on stormrage EU..no link due to EU Armory being broken at time of posting) who's wearing both these at the moment, a very sad bunny.

Very odd change, completely changing items designed for one class into items for another class instead of inserting a new drop seems a bit bizarre.

D'you think this possibly could be pre-emptive changes to Ret itemization? They do seem to be going the easy route (Not that I'm complaining... it IS a solution) as to odd itemization niches, what with the Druid emphasis change to coincide with Rogue gear.

At the moment my paladin is holy and having a hiatus from levelling, having some fun with friends in BG's and generaly just being a pain in the arse very hard to kill healer. When I start levelling again it will almost certainly be as protection. Paladin protection aoe killing is much the fastest and most satisfying way to level, at least it was from 40-49 for me.

If all retribution requires now is warrior stats and no mana pool to speak of, then there's already warrior plate available. Looking at wowhead there's now almost nothing for holy or protectiion till you hit outland, and absolutely nothing at all at this level.

Shoulder sizes are bigger for pretty much everyone when they're on the PTR I have noticed for the last 3-4 PTRs, no idea why though.

I think it's more a "generalization" of gear drops. It sucks that a "paladin" item is being re-made into a "warrior" item, but paladins can use warrior items just fine (it might not be ideal stat allocation, but the stats are still useful). Warriors have no use for the int/+dmg that shows up on paladin specific gear.


The pool of players available and willing to run a lower level instance is pretty small as it is; from a casual PuGer viewpoint, it's better to have gear that's a non-ideal upgrade, rather than gear that no one in the group can use.
(I see it as the same reason you don't see much +frost/shadow/fire blues in low level instances)

The rumored changes were supposed to be for one spec of paladins. Holy/Prot paladins would still scale better with +dmg.


But in any case, regardless of what does or does not change, paladins can make pretty decent use of warrior loot. The reverse is not true, so I think that's why they made these changes - create loot that several classes will want/use.

Except they haven't "created" any loot, they've just changed the stats on existing loot instead of adding a drop. It was true that back when I first ran BRD with my rogue we where all disapointed when this dropped, but only because Horde had no paladins at the time.

There are alternative warrior and now ret drops, these where the only plate pieces for non ret paladins, there are now none at all at that level.

Having googled this a bit since I first posted I see that I'm not the only one affected by this. There are a fair number of paladins in the same boat and none of them are happy with the change, I don't think there are any warriors who are suddenly going to find themselves wearing better warrior items.

It just seems to be laziness on the part of the itemisation team, making this change instead of adding a drop.

Adding a drop would mean that a group with a warrior but lacking a paladin now has a chance to get a useless piece of gear whereas changing a drop means that said group does not. You can argue that frustrating groups in which warriors are the only plate wearers is an acceptable price to pay for providing loot to non-ret paladins, but clearly there is a tradeoff there - it is not simply laziness.

Personally, I levelled a paladin as prot from 35 to 58 using "of the bear" gear from the AH and never noticed any great issues. Furthermore spell damage gear basically doesn't exist until BRD+, by which time you're almost into Hellfire, and once you're into Hellfire there's quest rewards everywhere blowing away old world (even new upgraded old world) items.

With the dilution of the loot tables (re: Thesis: How the Loot Tables Work), do you really want them to add <more> drops to the game based on a "niche" spec?

Note: "Niche" to me means being only usable by 1 class, and 1 spec in that class.

Well elemental shaman get their own loot. Who else needs mail with +spell damage, +spell crit and mp5 with just int and stam on it? Who else uses leather with +healing on it other than resto druids?

I've never played a Paladin, but I don't think it's a bad idea to give properly itemized gear from drops. Perhaps Blizzard needs a more dynamic drop system that reads who's in the group?

Ah, but other classes can use leather and mail, while only 1 can use plate that makes use of spell damage.