Thursday, April 15, 2010

The incoming changes

So all the class previews have already been posted, being the Paladin the last one. And the most dreaded possibly.
In several blogs I've already expressed some of my thoughts: the rune regeneration for death knights, maybe too radical and giving me the feeling the class will be harder to play, the priest healing, really needed another healing spell and that "Chakra" skill? Pure dps classes seem to get all benefits (hunter, rogue, mage). Warriors look a bit uncertain, with the changes to tanking, the buffing of arms... so seems fury is being left behind. Shamans have some gaining and some losing, so seem compensated (although resto seems very buffed despite losing the Cleansing Totem).
Last one has been the paladin. Aoe tanking gets some nerfing but will gain a much needed interrupt. Retri starts with Crusader Strike so is not so painful to level. And holy gains a new healing spell (really needed like priests?) and the spell I love more: Healing Hands. Aoe healing like the paladin is the healing totem. While we have yest to see if the amount of aoe healing is effective, the short range will force the paladin to go near the targets that need that healing. And this links with one of my latests posts: the paladin healer should be in the line of scrimmage, not hiding behind. Still the mobility may reduce effective healing, but we still need to see how all the changes will work.
Anyway, one thing seems to be a downfall is the homogenization of classes, specially tanks, with healers coming close. Why give all tools to tanks? As long as they aren't mandatory in fights there's no need to turn them all into the same class with different looking. Paladins have great aoe aggro but no interrupts and the survivavility is limited (the Ardebt Defender "cheat"), while warriors need more work for keeping the aoe threat but they got better survivality tricks they can use when they feel the need (Shield Wall, Last Man Standing). Until now I haven't found any fight where a certain tank class gets some significal advantage, so why this now?

Anyway it's still too soon and everything are just guessings. Some changes may don't even make it on production servers, others can be totally different. Time will tell.

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