Going Forward: Cataclysm Discussion
 

With Cataclysm approaching and information being made available, it is reasonable that some discussion will take place. For now, we'll start off with one thread. As more information is published, I'll likely shift us to 3 threads, one per spec. In the mean time it is important that you all understand that only threads with "Cataclysm" in their titles are an appropriate place to talk about whatever the latest news is. Even the Simple Q&A thread is off-limits. If I catch you posting about Cataclysm in a WOTLK thread, I will eat your first born.

Additionally, let's try to follow these general guidelines for this thread:

1. Don't just link a blue post. Talk about it. We're capable of reading as well as you are.
2. Do not whine/bitch. There is only one bitch here, and that is me. Feedback is good, just keep it constructive.
3. Don't make suggestions on what Blizzard should do. If you want a job in design, go apply to Blizzard.
4. Keep in mind things will be changing all the time, so just because something is in doesn't mean it's staying and just because something isn't doesn't mean it won't be in the future.

Blue Posts by date:
4/5/2010 - Dispel Mechanics - Zarhym post
4/7/2010 - Is healing currently something you can do wrong? - GC post
4/9/2010 - Cataclysm Class Preview: Druid - Bashiok
4/27/2010 - HoTs in Cataclysm - GC
4/30/2010 - Healing Touch - GC

From the Warlock preview:

Here's hoping they do the same to our HoTs/Bleeds. Clipping isn't so relevant, but haste being a pure throughput increase at no tradeoff would be an amazing buff (and would destroy long threads of arguing over RR grlyph), and anything that makes crit more attractive to us would be welcomed!

Some very cool stuff in these first previews, can't wait to see ours!

I will do my best to keep the blue posts linked in the first post of this thread. If you find one and I don't have it, please shoot me a PM. Thanks!

GC comparing healing in BC, LK, and Cata: MMO-Champion BlueTracker | What a HORRIBLE philosophy!

Like he's said before, more time will be spent in between 100% and 0% HP. He talks about current "stringent healing rotations" and bringing back "triage". More influential decisions does sound fun, but won't HoTs become insanely effective in a "everyone is wounded" environment?

They've mentioned that for energy, haste will make you regain energy faster. Given that I doubt seriously that they'd also make it so that dots could tick more often as well - at least not right away (I could see that being a tier bonus).

I'd imagine that the HoT/DoT for moonkin and resto is going to otherwise be pretty similar to locks; they've mentioned they want to make haste more awesome, and that's certainly one way to do it.

Not clipping DOTs for feral and continually being able to add onto the existing debuff would be pretty crazy. It would also make figuring out a proper rotation a bit strange too I'd imagine. Keep ripping with combo points until your stack is a a duration = to remainder of fight then just plain FB? Stack Rake at the start of the fight continually so you can just shred/FB during the heroism near the end? Could be neat.

No way will they let you indefinitely stack a debuff like that. I'd expect something more like you can clip between the 2nd to last tick and the last and add it on once. The quote specifically mentions clipping the final tick.

That would be pretty nice though as you could maintain 100% uptime without accounting for latency.

The general assumption is that it works like current mechanics that refresh DoTs and debuffs to their full duration. That is, casting a DoT before it runs out resets the duration to its maximum without interrupting the DoT ticks.

In this situation you can refresh your DoTs anytime you want without extending the time between ticks, but the motivation is to wait as long as possible so that you waste less time refreshing.

They've already said that the 3rd mastery will be unique to each spec so don't expect to see that happening.

It would make sense for the DoT change (no more clipping, haste/crit effects) will be something every class will see, although in our case (being a hybrid) I'm almost certain we will need to talent into the haste/crit effect. While I can't say that HoTs will get the same treatment from Crit (I would hope so...) I do expect haste will. Haste as we currently have it is a slippery slope, but with the changes to health pools (no more 1 GCD deaths, basically) then I don't think that will be a problem any longer. From what I can tell, the Direct heals will be the "get out of danger" sort of healing while HoTs will be more to bring people into a comfort zone.

Essentially, it seems they are going with a setup where you would use Nourish (or Healing Touch if necessary) to get someone out of that dangerous 10% range to about 20%, then have Lifebloom/Rejuvenation/Regrowth take care of the rest. However, they haven't said much about where HoTs will fit into the healing equation with the exception of some vague references to how it would be more cost-effective to let a Druid's HoTs tick someone to full vs. a Priest/Paladin spending mana to do it. That has a danger of relegating Druids to raid healing duty though.

The Priest preview seems to say that all HoTs and DoTs will be affected by crit/haste. The haste part is potentially problematic; there are going a whole bunch of odd breakpoints in the value of haste. That could be a huge pain for gearing actually.

They can handle this by adding a mini tick at the end, or haste "leftovers" are converted to extra SP on those ticks. Since different hots have a different number of ticks, it won't even be a matter of aiming for the "right" values of haste, since each hot will have different extra tick haste values. In addition this will also mean gearing is affected by the many group buffs that, at least currently, affect haste, contrary to what they mentioned for hit buffs like misery.

Hit rating
 

From the info on priests, i assume that moonkins need to shop for some extra hit as well (specifically considering the second sentence).

Misery will no longer affect spell Hit chance. We want players to be able to gear themselves around a Hit cap that isn't variable depending on group composition.

As moonkins will be sharing gear with trees (as noted in a bluepost some weeks ago), I think it's safe to assume they will get a spirit -> hit conversion talent too.

And yet if you read the whole of that post you would notice the following information:

Why some people are acting like this is all new information is beyond me because it was clearly stated not long ago we would get exactly what they are now repeating.


It will be interesting to see if they end up adding a 3rd direct healing spell for us such as how Shamans and Priests have gotten thus far and how they decide to deal with the hot 'downranking' aspect considering we are so based on them for our healing - unless they try and push us further to being more direct heal based. They have to be somewhat cautious with us in the fact when players are not meant to be fully topped off all the time it will make hots very very strong and I would expect a fair increase in cost of them too.

Ideally I am looking for some inter-class synergy between our spells rather than any more new ones especially when Lifebloom has been somewhat abandoned over the expansion after being a fairly core aspect of our tank healing.

That would work, although might be a bit too mathy for a mechanic that's going to be constantly visible to all players. Also, the Warlock changes say something about being able to extend DoT's without clipping them, but it's not clear exactly how that will work.