A fellow player from another guild had recently let on that he knew someone who worked at Blizzard. I usually just give people who say such things the benefit of the doubt and wait to hear what they say. In this individual's case, he has been on the money more times than I can count, successfully predicting all sorts of miscellaneous changes that have inevitably ended up in each successive patch. And he usually makes these predictions months in advance. So...at present, I currently lean very heavily towards him telling the truth, rather than just causing mischief.

Yesterday, he let a doozy go. The possibility that Blood Elves will be Paladins and Draenei will be Shamans in TBC.

At first, when I heard him say this, it sounded completely game breaking, and I dismissed it. However, in the back of my mind, I was almost positive I had seen something...somewhere...to lend evidence to this argument. The evidence was this image I found on wowguru, littered amonst a bunch of other blurry TBC shots...

http://www.wowguru.com/gallery/original/1332.jpg

Regardless of whether the image is fake or not...given that Blizzard has certainly done a good job at suprising the hell out of people with changes completely out of left field...and the fact that this friend of mine has been right much more than he has been wrong...

...what does this mean for us? Trying to balance a raid by figuring out how many Shaman slots to cut...to make room for Paladins?

(I almost shudder to ask him what the Blood Elf Priest racial will be...as I expect he'll answer "lol fear ward").

fwiw, I also play with a guy who works at Blizzard, and while he has never gone on record, he has hinted to the rest of the shaman that we might want to think about rerolling before TBC comes out.

Outside of the minimum number of paladins to cover blessings, do you gain anything by cutting shaman?

My understanding is that you need 3 paladins to cover the raid with their appropriate blessings, are you really better served by cutting 3 shaman over say a priest, a shaman and a druid?

Oh man. The image wasn't fake, but it was an NPC, not a player, and not a trainer.

Aside from that, giving both sides Paladins and Shaman would be such an amazingly huge increase to raid DPS and effeciency that the entire concept of raid balance would go out the window. I very much doubt this.

It also, in one inelegant but fell swoop, shuts up the horde crying over pve imbalance, and the alliance crying over pvp imbalance.

I really hope that it is not true, or that if it is, it never makes it outside the planning phase. Aside from liking the differences in factions, I really don't feel like rerolling, and I would figure that a horde raid with pallies is going to need 1, maybe 2 shaman to give melee DPS WF, and that's it.

As long as they did away with tranquil air totem I couldnt see the increase that shaman would bring to an alliance raid to be more than could be easily balanced. Of course that would make horde guilds ridiculously more successful, but that isnt really a balance issue.

If I were a raid leader that could use shamans and paladns together I'd want 4 priests 4 druids 4 shamans and 3 paladins as my healing.

Realistically, though, I don't think we can really say things like "man that would break balance" about any speculated change for the expansions. We're going to be getting all-new skills and 41pt talents in all three trees for each class. Our prior conceptions of balance are out the window anyway.

I'd cry.

I hate pallys with a vengeance and seeing the raving numpties with their gutless bubble wrap running around like idiots in PvP on my side would just upset me even more....

Moreover the injustice of basically making 3-5 of every top horde raiding guild reroll as a paladin (shudder) is just harsh.

That would make some sense i guess.

Blizzard has been annoyed from day one with the constant horde vs alliance whine, this would shut those up once for good, and solve all the loot dropping for a faction and not the other etc. issues.

The only drawback would be the loss of the faction flavor i guess, but in the end it would benefit everyone.

I'd rather they just balance out the classes in an end game perspective using the new expansion abilities in some form. If they can balance Starcraft they can balanced two classes.

YAY WINDFURY + BOK + BOM + BS. Even now that would put me at well over 2k AP on Windfury attacks. With level 70 and ilevel 100(+) items that would be sweet. Then again those two classes tend to draw the most ZOMG I R HYBRID LEMME SPEC FOR RAID DPS.

Just so you know, pigeonholing yourself as pure damage and refusing to heal isn't taking advantage of your hybrid role anymore than straight healing is!

Sorry for the tangent, continue! Would make pvp interesting to say the least.