Ok, I have taken all the lastest information and made one large article.  Read the end for a special contest.

Cataclysm Beta: Patch notes, build 12319

by Michael Sacco Jun 30th 2010 at 9:05PM

The patch notes for the newly-opened Cataclysm beta test have been updated as of build 12319. Full notes are available after the break.

Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes 6.30.10

Cataclysm Beta Patch Notes - 6.30.10

Cataclysm Beta: New maps

by Michael Sacco on Jun 30th 2010 (1 day ago)

Jolesole of raevyn.net (coincidentally a great source for Cataclysm info) has been datamining the latest beta patch, and he's found a whole bunch of new or changed maps for zones in the new expansion. Zones include Redridge Mountains, Westfall, Vashj'ir, and more. You can check them out in our gallery below.

Gallery: Cataclysm maps

Filed under: Cataclysm

Wowhead launches Cataclysm database

by Adam Holisky on Jun 30th 2010 (1 day ago)

• Adarrah's Semiprecious Signet
• Frostmourne
• Chestplate of Viridian Renewal
• Blinkered Hood
• Helm of Terrorizing Fangs
• Cataclysm Meat II
• Cracked Jewelry Box

Cataclysm Beta: Guild perks

by Michael Sacco Jun 30th 2010 at 11:00PM

• Cash Flow (Rank 2): Each time you loot money from an enemy, an extra 10% money is generated and deposited directly into your guild bank.
• Hasty Hearth: Reduces the cooldown on your Hearthstone by 15 minutes.
• Guild Mail: In-game mail sent between guild members now arrives instantly.

• Cash Flow (Rank 1): Each time you loot money from an enemy, an extra 5% money is generated and deposited directly into your guild bank.
• Cash Flow (Rank 2): Each time you loot money from an enemy, an extra 10% money is generated and deposited directly into your guild bank.
• Reinforce (Rank 1): Items take 5% less durability loss when you die.
• Reinforce (Rank 2): Items take 10% less durability loss when you die.
• Hasty Hearth: Reduces the cooldown on your Hearthstone by 15 minutes.
• Chug-A-Lug (Rank 1): The duration of buffs from all guild cauldrons and feasts is increased by 50%.
• Chug-A-Lug (Rank 2): The duration of buffs from all guild cauldrons and feasts is increased by 100%.
• Working Overtime: Increases the chance to gain a skill increase on tradeskills by 10%.
• The Quick and the Dead: Increases health and mana gained when resurrected by a guild member by 50% and increases movement speed while dead by 100%. Does not function in combat or while in a Battleground or Arena.
• Guild Mail: In-game mail sent between guild members now arrives instantly.
• Everyone's A Hero (Rank 1): Increases Heroism points gained by 5%.
• Everyone's A Hero (Rank 2): Increases Heroism points gained by 10%.
• Mobile Banking: Summons your guild bank. 1 hour cooldown.
• Honorable Mention (Rank 1): Increases Honor points gained by 5%.
• Honorable Mention (Rank 2): Increases Honor points gained by 10%.
• Bartering (Rank 1): Reduces the price of items from all vendors by 5%.
• Bartering (Rank 2): Reduces the price of items from all vendors by 10%.
• Bountiful Bags: Increases the quantity of materials gained from Mining, Skinning, Herbalism, and Disenchanting by 15%.
• Have Group, Will Travel: Summons all raid or party members to the caster's current location. 2 hour cooldown.
• Mass Resurrection: Brings all dead party and raid members back to life with 35 health and 35 mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. No cooldown.

Cataclysm Beta: New skills, spells, and talents

by Michael Sacco on Jun 30th 2010 (1 day ago)

Now that the alpha is over, the beta's begun, and the NDA's been lifted, new Cataclysm information was bound to be all over the internet. It's no surprise that it's already out there now. MMO-Champion, for example, has a ton of information on new class skills, spells, and talents available on their site.

Head over to your favorite class' page by following the links below and check it out!

• Warrior
• Shaman
• Warlock
• Priest
• Rogue
• Paladin
  
• Mage
• Druid
• Hunter
• Death Knight

Cataclysm Beta: Professions and trade skills

by Alex Ziebart on Jun 30th 2010 (1 day ago)

Step aside, class changes. Back off, world revamp. Now it's time to put what everyone really wants to see into the spotlight: trade skills. MMO-Champion, which is having some difficulty staying up and stable this evening, has what you're looking for amongst its Cataclysm information.

Okay, trade skills aren't the most exciting thing in the world, but these previews give us a glimpse at what sort of stats we'll be dealing with on our gear in this expansion. Just look at the Elementium Poleaxe, Bio-Optic Killshades and the new gems. If those MMO-Champion pages aren't your style, there's also a good unofficial trade skill compilation on the Cataclysm forums.

Cataclysm Beta: Cataclysm will bring troll and dwarf warlocks

by Daniel Whitcomb on Jun 30th 2010 (1 day ago)

If you've been thinking about rolling one of the new class/race combinations, but haven't really been impressed by the ones they announced a ways back, you may be in luck. Lead systems designer Ghostcrawler has confirmed that troll and dwarf warlocks will be coming with Cataclysm.

There's no word yet on the lore behind this change, but between Zalazane on the troll side and the Dark Irons on the dwarf side, it seems likely there's good enough reason to unlock the class. Now if only we could get them to give us Worgen paladins, we'd really be cooking. Stay tuned to WoW.com, there's more juicy Cataclysm info to come.

Cataclysm Beta: New blacksmithing items revealed

by Matthew Rossi on Jul 1st 2010 (1 day ago)

Well, even if you're a raiding player clearing heroic mode ICC 25 there will be some really tempting items for you as you level from 80 to 85 in Cataclysm. Items like this Obsidian Executioner, usable at level 81, will certainly be of interest to your 2h melee DPS, while the Decapitator's Razor will draw attention from enhancement shamans, rogues, and perhaps even death knights and fury warriors with the new Single-Minded Fury talent.

From armor to weapons, there's a wide assortment of gear already datamined by the folks at MMO-Champion and I have to say some of this stuff is astonishing. We've talked about gear resets before when previous expansions come out, but when you're looking at such a massive DPS increase between an epic weapon dropped by the heroic Lich King and the crafted weapon you can equip at level 81, it seems like this expansion is really serious about it. Just one example is this level 80 blue tanking hat with 290 stamina on it, a clear sign of the increase in health pools we were told we'd be seeing. The new design paradigm of Cataclysm is definitely showing up in these items. It's safe to say that if you haven't been raiding, you'll probably catch up quickly, and even if you have you'll be replacing items pretty early on.

Breakfast Topic: How excited are you about the new Cataclysm info?

by Daniel Whitcomb on Jul 1st 2010 (1 day ago)

It's been a pretty busy night for us here at the WoW.com world headquarters, what with the Cataclysm beta dropping, the NDA disappearing, and the new information pouring forth like boxed wine at a neighborhood fourth of July block party. There's been plenty of stuff to go over, from the new guild perks to Sylvanas' surprising plans to the newest class changes.

I find myself hoping that there's more to come in the area of death knight changes, but I'm in love with Sylvanas' open wicked evilness, and I'm tempted to roll a worgen female for the jokes and flirts alone. I'm definitely eager to see what else we can dig out of the beta in the coming weeks as we find out what's going down with the long awaited expansion.

What about you? Are you excited? Or are you underwhelmed by your class changes and annoyed by dwarven warlocks? What's your impression of the new Cataclysm information so far?

Cataclysm closed beta live stream

by Adam Holisky on Jul 1st 2010 (1 day ago)

For your viewing pleasure this wonderful day-after-the-beta-dropped-morning, we present to you the live stream of the Cataclysm closed beta. Right now we're taking a romp through some of the available dungeons and zones, flying around and seeing the various sites to be seen.

The stream is up on our uStream page, so the quality isn't the best in the world -- but it works.

We'll keep this stream going as much as we can today, and will bump this post up if we're going to do something really cool. We're also in the chat channel over there if you want to drop by and say hello.

Scattered Shots: Cataclysm beta hunter info

by Brian Wood Jul 1st 2010 at 11:00AM

Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim.

Okay, take a deep breath. The NDA has been lifted and we're about to take a look at what's been going on with the hunter class behind closed doors. Those of us who have been desperately keeping our mouths shut until we were vibrating with the secret knowledge we possess can finally climb to the rooftops and start shouting about the awesomeness contained within.

Because those hunter class previews we had earlier in the year? That was nothing. Nothing I tell you compared to the sweet, sweet huntery goodness lurking behind the closed beta doors.

Join me after the cut as we begin to scrape the surface of some of the awesomesauce hidden in the Cataclysm beta. I think you'll join me in agreeing that it's been worth the wait. Hold tight to your seat, folks; this is a killer ride.

Forgive me if there is not space enough to talk about every single change we're seeing and the impact of them all and all the combinations. Suffice it to say that we do not yet know how the specs will compare against each other, we do not know how we'll compare against other classes, and we still don't know exactly what our rotations are going to look like.

What we do know are the current, not final, subject-to-change-at-any-time hunter talents and abilities. And they are awesome. Here are the big ones.

Camouflage

Sure, we knew all about our new camo ability, but there were a lot of questions floating around about its utility. While it still seems primarily PvP-centric, the current wording make it sound very strong indeed.

You camouflage, causing you and your Pet to blend into your surroundings. After 3 sec., you will enter a camouflaged state for 1 min, making you untargetable and providing stealth while stationary. While camouflaged, you and your pet's movement speed is reduced by 30%, but the damage done by your next attack is increased by 15%.
You can lay traps while under the effect, but any damage done by you or your pet will cancel the effect. Cannot be cast while in combat.
45 Focus, Instant, 1 min cooldown

So as long as you aren't moving, you are entirely untargetable and you get stealth -- like that thing rogues have. AoE damage will still bust you out, as will shooting, but this is a pretty cool and potentially strong ability. Now we can finally return to the days of flag-guarding stealthed night elf hunters opening with their massive Aimed Shot. Speaking of which ...

Aimed Shot

I'd just like to point out for those grognards out there who have been playing since vanilla, Aimed Shot is going to look a lot more like it did back then. Aimed Shot will no longer have a healing reduction component to it and will no longer be an instant shot. Instead, it now has a 2.5-second cast time (in vanilla, it was a 3-second cast time) and will hit with a whollop.

It looks like Aimed Shot is intended to be our big opening shot, especially deadly as a PvP opener. The new version of Careful Aim talent boosts the Aimed Shot crit chance on targets at almost full health, and of course we'll be able to boost our damage coming out of Camouflage. Further, the new Master Marksman talent deep in the MM tree lets them eventually proc free instant Aimed Shots.

Stings and venoms

Rather than having a bunch of stings, hunters will now have Serpent Sting (like we do now) and venoms. You can only have one venom up at a time, but you can have both Serpent Sting and a venom up. Here are our venoms:

• Scorpid Venom Reduces the targets armor by 4% for 30 seconds. Subsequent Steady Shot or Cobra Shots increase the effect by 4%, stacking up to three times. Only one Venom per Hunter can be active on any one target.
  30 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant
• Viper Venom Increases the casting time of all spells done by the enemy target by 30% for 30 seconds. Only one Venom per Hunter can be active on any one target.
  30 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant
• Widow Venom A venomous shot that reduces the effectiveness of any healing taken by 25% for 30 seconds. Only one Venom per Hunter can be active on any one target.
  30 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant

As you can see, the new Widow Venom will be replacing the Aimed Shot mortal strike effect (they're all down to 25% reduction instead of 50% now). Scorpid Venom looks like it'll be our default venom to have applied, though it will be interesting to see whether or not this effect stacks with Sunder Armor, which in Cataclysm will also be three stacks of 4%. If not, then venoms become optional for non-MM hunters in PvE, which is fine because we can find other uses for the focus.

But for MM ... Oh, for MM, venoms are insanely exciting because of Chimera Shot. Here's the new Chimera Shot info:

Chimera Shot
50 Focus, 5-35 yd range, Instant, 10 sec cooldown
You deal 125% weapon damage, refreshing your Serpent Sting and triggering an effect depending on the venom on the target:
Viper Venom - Instantly burns 5% of the target's total mana.
Scorpid Venom - Attempts to Disarm the target for 10 sec sec. This effect cannot occur more than once per 1 minute.
Widow Venom - Instantly heals you for 15% of your total health.

First of all, we seem to have lost the Serpent Sting damage bonus when firing Chimera Shot -- though that may just not be on the tooltip at the moment; we'll have to assume that they removed it. What this doesn't tell us is whether Chimera will also refresh your venom (as well as your Serpent Sting), but either way, holy awesomesauce Widow Venom! 15% self heal? I can really see how that fits into the new philosophy of mana management in raids, where the ability of us DPSers to avoid damage and take care of ourselves will be vital for the success of the raids. This will make us beloved of the healers, and they can divert the heals we save them to our pets. Right?

Right?

Rhumba

When you cast two Steady Shot or Cobra Shot attacks in a row, your next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot will summon 3 Rattlesnakes onto the enemy target. If the enemy target attacks a friend or foe, a Rattlesnake will instantly strike the enemy dealing damage equal to [5%/10%/15%] of your Steady Shot or Cobra Shot damage.

This oddly-named talent is found down the BM tree, and it looks like huge fun to me. Now BM is really making a push as the machine gun spec (including the new Focus Fire, which consumes your pet's Frenzy stacks with Kill Command, increasing your attack speed by 6% per stack consumed) and is also apt to have the most haste, which means the best focus regen. While BM will have the fastest Steady Shot and Cobra Shot rates of fire, possibly only one-second casts, they'll also be likely to have enough focus to be using other shots more often. So it's possible that actually casting two Cobra Shots or Steady Shots in a row will be a decision you make, rather than something that's just going to have to happen, as is likely with other specs.

The BM tree in general has lots of changes to talents, and both attack speed increases and focus regen are common themes.

SV and Serpent Sting

The SV tree is probably the least changed, with mana conservation/regen talents becoming focus conservation/regen. It does look like SV is being tagged as the Serpent Sting tree. The first, fascinating Serpent Sting talent is on the third tier and so available to any spec:

Improved Serpent Sting
Your Serpent Sting also does instant damage equal to [15%/30%] of its total periodic effect.

Thus every time you apply your Serpent Sting, you're also making an direct damage attack, which we can assume is further buffed by SV's Elemental Damage Mastery bonus. MM will want to pass on this one, probably, since they'll be refreshing Serpent Sting with Chimera Shot, rather than re-applying it. Then further down the tree we have:

Toxicology
Increases the periodic critical damage of your Serpent Sting and Black Arrow by 50%.

Note that Toxicology actually has two ranks, and it's not clear at this point whether it's 50% per rank or only 50% after both ranks are put in. But either way, that's a huge boost to Serpent Sting and Black Arrow damage.

Improved Aspect of the Hawk replaced with upgrade

This somewhat awkward talent at the top of the BM tree is gone and is instead replaced with this gem:

One With Nature
Increases the attack power bonus of your Aspect of the Hawk by [5%/10%/15%/20%/25%], and increases the amount of focus restored by your Aspect of the Fox by [2%/4%/6%/8%/10%].

Now that looks a lot more attractive, no? But just what, you ask, is this Aspect of the Fox? Let's pause a moment for a quick bathroom break so you don't soil your britches when you read this one, because I've been saving the best for last.

Aspect of the totally awesome kickass Fox

Aspect of the Fox
The hunter takes on the aspects of a fox, increasing your focus regeneration by 20% and allows you to Auto-shot while moving.
Instant, 1 sec cooldown

Oh, yeah. There's our focus regen ability for kiting or massive movement fights, but added on top of it is being able to auto-shot while moving. Don't tell me Ghostcrawler doesn't love us. He adores us. He's showering us with gifts in Cataclysm.

When I first saw this, I thought the same thing that you are probably thinking: "OMG overpowered and awesome! But ... probably going to get nerfed."

But upon further reflection, I've changed my mind quite a bit. Hunters have the most complex movement management in the game, and this ability seems to me to be a way to bridge that complexity a bit. In Cataclysm in a movement-heavy fight, any hunter can pop into Aspect of the Fox and at least maintain their auto-shots, as well as gaining a bit more focus to keep their instants supplied most of the time.

However, the skilled hunter will have the same movement management skills that we do today. We'll be able to stutter-step our way across the field of battle, getting all our auto-shots just like the guy in Aspect of the Fox, but we'll also get the attack power bonus from Aspect of the Hawk (not dragonhawk anymore, by the way) increasing the damage of all of our shots, auto-shots and special shots.

So while in a way this is giving us something we didn't have before (auto-shots on the move), it's really giving us something we can already do if we play well enough, but costing us damage to do it. And the skilled hunters can still gain the extra DPS benefit from their superior skill, the exact same advantage that we have now. I think it's a fantastic addition to the hunter toolbox.

Cataclysm Beta: Warrior talent and ability changes

by Matthew Rossi Jul 1st 2010 at 3:00PM

Well, we finally have some insight into how warrior talents and abilities are changing in Cataclysm. While it's fair to say that we're not getting a ton of new abilities, what we are getting are worth discussing, and some of the talents have changed pretty dramatically from their current implementation.

Just one example to start us: Shield Slam no longer uses block value in any way, shape or form, since block value is going away. Now, Shield Slam is purely dependent on attack power, which is of course derived from strength. The stronger your warrior is, the harder he or she hits things with a shield. In other words, if you want to hit hard with your Shield Slams? Stack strength. It really shouldn't be all that hard to do. Frankly, removing the whole shield block value conversion to this ability is welcome from my perspective.

It should be noted that several abilities mentioned in the Cataclysm warrior previews are not here. Either they won't be, or they're not implemented yet, I have no idea which. Please don't stone me. Masteries appear to be exactly as they have been related to us, but Gushing Wound, Inner Rage and Heroic Leap do not seem to be implemented yet.

But that's hardly the only ability or talent seeing some changes. As an overview (with a more complete one to follow tomorrow in The Care and Feeding of Warriors):

• As reported before, all weapon specializations are gone. Their effects are either folded into stances/mastery benefits or are just plain gone. The only reason to use an axe, mace or sword is if that's what you want to use or is the best available weapon.
• Safeguard now reduces critical hit chance by 6%, making it the replacement for defense, as noted above.
• Likewise, Whirlwind is a true AoE ability hitting all targets within 8 yards for 50% weapon damage with both weapons. While this will absolutely take it out of the rotation for Single-Minded Fury warriors, 50% weapon damage with two two-handed weapons might make it worth using for Titan's Grip DW fury for when everything else is on cooldown. But it will certainly no longer be a "use it whenever it's up" ability.
• Cleave and Heroic Strike have been converted to the instant casts that take more rage to deal more damage model. Heroic Strike's tooltip also no longer indicates it causes any additional threat. The days of spamming these abilities are hereby on notice. As soon as the pre-Cat patch drops (4.0) those days are dead. My wrist will be relieved. It's also worth noting that at this time, Execute is basically a slightly better HS that you can use at below 20% health (or if Sudden Death procs), so I expect for arms warriors HS might never be used, and for fury warriors at 20% Execute will replace HS.
• Mortal Strike has been changed to incorporate the new model for healing debuffs, 25% healing reduction. At present, this beta build seems to have left Furious Attacks alone, lettings the healing debuff stack to 50%. I expect this to be changed in a future build.
• Improved Heroic Strike no longer reduces rage cost, but instead increases damage by 5/10/15%.
• Improved Execute likewise increases damage by 10/20% rather than reducing rage cost.
• Blood Craze is actually decent now. You have a 10% chance to regenerate up to 7.5% of your total health on taking any damage. Good for leveling and possibly even good for high environmental damage fights.
• Cruelty no longer increases base critical strike chance. Now, it ncreases your chance to critically hit with your Victory Rush, Slam and Bloodthirst by 5/10%. Yes, that's a pretty savage nerf. But at least it's 10% for those abilities and only takes up two points now.
• Damage Shield is also based off of attack power now.

We also have new talents to consider.

• Blitz stuns an additional one to two targets.
• Disarming Glare causes your successful disarms to also cause a cower in fear effect for five to 10 seconds. (I'm hoping this isn't considered the promised warrior CC ability. Ten seconds?)
• Improved Pummel generates rage on a successful pummel, 10 to 20 rage to be exact.
• Single-Minded Fury increases weapon damage by 20% when you have one-handed (I assume main- and off-hand weapons count) equipped and allows Slam and Cleave to hit with both weapons. Without being able to parse this as yet my gut feeling is that this will outperform TG at least at first. Cleave's new rage cost will make spamming it unlikely, and Bloodsurge will only proc slam up to 20% off of Heroic Strike, Bloodthirst and Whirlwind attacks (of the three, the only one you'll be using on cooldown is Bloodthirst, so expect instant cast slams to be less frequent), so it shouldn't be completely unbalanced. We'll see if SMF overcompensates for TG's stat benefit or not.
• Fury in the Blood increases damage by 2/4/6/8/10% while Bloodrage is active. Part of me thinks, "Great. As if rage management in Cataclysm wasn't going to be enough of a pain in the hindquarters, here comes a talent that turns my only reliable way to get more of it into a DPS cooldown." On the other hand, you're going to be using Bloodrage on almost every cooldown as it is. Might as well get 10% more damage when you do.
• Relentless Bloodrage increases the duration of Bloodrage. This should be useful both for more rage generation and for the Fury in the Blood talent, especially with the mastery benefit to all enrage effects for top tier fury. (Since Bloodrage is an enrage, the fury mastery should increase its rage generation and the damage gained by Fury in the Blood.)
• Impending Victory tries to solve the problem of losing Whirlwind in the fury rotation. It does so by creating an ability similar to Sudden Death for Victory Rush. However, since Heroic Strike will be far less often used and Slam is only used if Bloodsurge procs, I have no idea how well this ability will work. I'm going to assume it will need some tweaking.
• Sweep and Clear generates additional rage for every target you hit up to a max of 9 rage.

Of course, the talent trees are re-ordered as well, another expected work in progress.

Just as an example of what you might see in the future, here's a SMF fury build that goes fairly deep into protection for DPS talents. (Of course, we have no way of knowing if One Handed Weapon Spec will stack with SMF at this time. But if it does, you can get there. Is a flat 10% more damage with one handed weapons worth losing Impale?) We'll talk more about this in tomorrow's warrior column.

Cataclysm Beta: Restoration shaman update

by Joe Perez Jul 1st 2010 at 5:00PM

New spells

We heard about the new spells that Blizzard had planned for us at the official class preview, but there was not much more information available after that. Now that Cataclysm has hit its first beta phase, we are finally starting to see these new spells.

Spiritwalker's Grace Shaman have long been though of as turret healers, stationary chain-healing artillery. Our tool set has only recently become movement-friendly with additions like Riptide. Level 85 is when it appears we will get this wonderful spell. After using it, for 10 seconds you can move and cast any non-instant shaman spell. It rests on a two-minute cooldown so it will likely see a lot of use. This spell gives us the ability to keep up with other classes on the mobile healing front.

Healing Rain When this spell was first announced, there were a few people that scoffed at it. This spell, however, offers some very interesting ideas. First of all, it is an area of effect heal over time. That right there is pretty awesome. Second, it doesn't have to be targeted on a player. We pick this spell up at level 83. You can target any location to place the AoE HoT, and it will persist for 10 seconds. Every two seconds, anyone in the affected area will receive healing. This is similar to our Healing Stream Totem in how it pulses heals. The spell has two-second cast a 10-second cooldown, so after the effect is done, you can place another. This gives us more tools to aid in filling the healing gap between classes on the HoT front. Interestingly note, it was mentioned to me in passing that this was the original plan for priest's Circle of Healing before it was altered to its current state.

Unleashed Elements Affectionately being referred to as the "shaman's judgment," this ability uses whatever weapon imbue you have active as its base component. This becomes available to us at level 81. At this time, Earthliving Weapon is said to heal a target slightly and buff the shaman's next healing spell by 20%.This can come in handy for super-charging heals; just think of using this ability to boost healing on a Chain Heal and then using it on someone with Riptide. Can potentially lead to some huge heals.

Bind Elemental Starting at level 68, you can crowd control elementals. This is similar to Hex for us, and honestly it is something I've been wondering why shaman haven't had for a while now. I mean, we are supposed to be at one with the elemental spirits, right? We can bind one elemental for up to 50 seconds, taking it completely out of the game. This is similar to Banish, except that any damage done to the target will break the hold. This further adds to our utility, and with the upcoming instances we've heard about, it is very likely we will see at least a few elementals.

Greater Healing Wave Our brand new nuke heal. This will be our situational bomb heal. To put this in perspective, the new Healing Wave costs 6% of our base mana and caps out at 4,268 healing (before spellpower, etc.). GHW costs 30% of our base mana and caps out at 8,537. This will most certainly be a situational heal, if nothing else, just based on the mana cost alone: five times the cost for twice the healing. I'm going to keep my eye on this heal because I think that it will be one of the ones that changes frequently before retail release.

Old spells updated

Not much in this category yet, but I suspect that will change. As it stands right now, there are two major changes to look at.

Earth Shield The cost of earth shield is being drastically increased. In the current live version of the game, rank 5 earth shield costs 15% of our base mana. In the beta at max level, this has been increased to 38%. The cost has increased 2.5 times, but the effect remains largely the same. As it stands right now, common practice is to refresh Earth Shield whenever it gets low on charges, not even waiting for it to be fully used. In Cataclysm, however, if this cost remains that high, we are going to have to shift gears and wait until every last charge has been consumed and possibly not even put it back up right away. This falls in line with Blizzard's saying they wanted to make healers more mana-conscious based on spell choices, and here is proof of that.

Chain Heal I found the changes here to be very interesting. First, the mana cost has been reduced at maximum level in Cataclysm. In the live version right now, Chain Heal costs 19% of your base mana; in the beta at the highest level, it costs 17%. A 2% difference may not seem like much, but keep that in mind while we talk about the second change. On the live server now, the maximum level of chain heal caps out at 1,205 healing before spellpower and bonuses. In the beta, this has increased to 3,389 cap. That is a huge leap for only a five-level difference. The healing cap combined with a reduced cost continues to make this our most efficient heal. This will likely change, but as it stands, it looks like chain heal is back to being the shaman heal of choice.

New talents

We have already heard about Ancestral Resolve and Focused Insight, and it would appear that they are here to stay for the time being. With the announcement of the beta however, two new talents have joined the party.

Empowered Healing 3 ranks
Requires 3 Points in Nature's Blessing
Requires 40 Points in Restoration talents
Your Greater Healing Wave spell gains an additional [7%/14%/20%] of your bonus healing effects, and your Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave spells an additional [3%/7%/10%]

This is similar to the Empowered Healing found among holy priests. It grants a nice bonus to our HW and LHW, but grants an even bigger bonus to our nuke heal. While GHW may be expensive, this talent makes it that much more worth it when we have to use it. It is not a terribly exciting talent, though, and seems almost like a must-have talent.

Telluric Currents 3 ranks
Requires 45 Points in Restoration Talents
Your attunement to natural energies causes your Lightning Bolt spell to restore mana equal to [15%/30%/45%] of damage dealt.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one yet. It is a tier 10 talent deep into the talent tree that encourages healers to DPS by allowing them some of the mana back. Throwing lightning is very different than throwing an odd shock out in combat. Even though Focused Insight gives you a bonus to your healing while returning some mana for using your shocks, Flame Shock for example still costs 16% of your base mana. Lightning Bolt only costs 6% of your base mana. Restoration shaman should have a decent crit rating and our spellpower can sometimes be enough to produce interesting LB crits, so one has to wonder exactly how much mana can be gained from this. I think this talent will be something to watch, if nothing else just to see what Blizzard has in mind for it. It is possible this is an attempt at the "fun but not necessary" talents they have been talking about since BlizzCon '09.

Overall, the talent tree still seems pretty bloated. There are still a large amount of "must-have" talents, which is the opposite of what Blizzard has stated they wanted to see with the talent trees. We will have to see how the tree develops over the course of the beta. Keep in mind this information is current as of build 12319 of the Cataclysm beta. This is subject to change as the game is altered by developers during the beta testing process. But be sure to check back often, as we here at WoW.com will keep you up to date with the latest information!

Auctioneering in Cataclysm

by Basil Berntsen Jul 1st 2010 at 6:00PM

We've all been soaking up all the newly released Cataclysm info from this morning. I was so busy drooling (and hammering) on my keyboard about the hunter changes that I only got around to thinking about the profession and guild changes after my fourth coffee.

Here's what we know:

• All professions seem to have a new cap of 525.
• You will be able to learn the next level of crafting skills at level 75. Well, alchemy works that way, and I assume that at least the other crafting skills will be the same level. No word on gathering skills yet.
• Guild perks are programmed into the client and have been data-mined; however, the more complex leveling system has been abandoned. No precise writeup about how guilds gain perks, but I hear they still work for experience.

Now, of course, everything we know is subject to change; however, just looking at the guild changes and some of the profession work that's been done, I am starting to have thoughts about what auctioneering is going to be like in Cataclysm. For one, having a guild bank will no longer just be for storage!

Guild perks for auctioneers

Here are the perks that Auctioneers will want to gain on their guilds, assuming it's not going to cost them more than it's worth.

Working Overtime Increases the chance to gain a skill increase on trade skills by 10%. This could be huge! I can certainly see myself temporarily putting a crafting alt into my storage bank to reduce the cost of leveling professions.

Bountiful Bags Increases the quantity of materials gained from Mining, Skinning, Herbalism and Disenchanting by 15%. This is almost as huge, because over any given expansion, while I power level several professions, I am constantly disenchanting. I imagine this will continue, judging by the peek I took at the data-mined enchanting recipes.

Bartering (Rank 2) Reduces the price of items from all vendors by 10%. This is nice, but won't be a huge game-changer for me. Still, I got my start by buying cloth, making bandages and vendoring them. Assuming this works when buying and selling to NPCs, it could be great. Even if it's buying only, I've spend over 10,000g on parchment since I became a scribe. And I started late in the game and, aside from my initial research, have been eschewing the glyph market.

Mobile Banking Summons your guild bank. 1-hour cooldown. This is no game-changer, but assuming I could get it with a minimum of effort, it would allow me to take advantage of lower lag areas to do my crafting. Aside from saving a few minutes of transfer time between the bank and the mailbox/AH, however, this won't do much for us and probably won't be worth it.

If the first few levels of guild perks are really annoying for a single person to get on their own, I suspect we might see more guilds and auctioneers pairing up. Actual functioning guilds have a lot to offer auctioneers; however, the auctioneer can't simply use the guild bank as a dumping ground for storage. Still, if I had to choose between two cheap tabs worth of space and the ability to proc more mats when I disenchant, I'd probably be better off with the mats.

Preparing for the profession changes

There's a whole post in how to prepare economically for Cataclysm, but I'll limit myself to what you can do to prepare your business and cover what you can do to profit off others' businesses later. Obviously, we're going to need higher-level professions alts: 75 for alchemy (and presumably all the other crafting skills), so get your alts where they need to be before Cataclysm launches and you have better things to do. Also, if you have any profession slots on a high-level character you're planning on dropping or one that you've never used, consider prioritizing gathering skills while waiting. The single time in the life cycle of an expansion where gathering is more money per hour than auctioneering is the first week or so of an expansion. People will be paying absurd amounts of money for herbs, ore and skins. If you're tempted to just use the stock yourself, don't. Unless you really need to race to a 525 crafting skill, you're better off selling the mats you get farming the first week, and then use that money to buy double the amount when the supply starts to increase.

So what are your business plans for Cataclysm?

Raid Rx: Cataclysm healing overview

by Matt Low Jul 1st 2010 at 7:00PM

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand pooh-bah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related.

There is a ton of information that is now available for Cataclysm. During the class previews, I covered on some of the healing changes from class perspectives. Most of those still stand and there has been little change since then. This week, I wanted to help clarify some of the more general changes that are impacting healing.

I guess we'll start with the burning question first.

What's up with the DPS talents in the healing trees?

Good thing Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) stepped in and provided a few reasons for the inclusion of select DPS talents in some of the healing trees. Discipline priests will gain access to Atonement, Evangelism and Archangel. Restoration shamans get another talent that's way down in their tree called Telluric Currents.

Don't expect to see healers competing against warlocks or anything, though. Let's break down some of the reasons.

Ghostcrawler

One thing we healers need to remember is that not every talent is going to be inherently useful for what we're doing. I think somewhere along the way, the developers realized that some players preferred to level as a healing spec instead of just having a DPS off spec such as balance or shadow. Therefore, some talents were introduced to help ease that process.

Soloing Even though we're only going to level once on our healing character of choice, there is going to still be some soloing content to do. There will still be daily quests for us to do, and you can bet that some of them will involve crushing mobs.

PvP Participating in arenas or battlegrounds, I notice that I'll start unloading DPS on a kill target if it happens to be called for. But I'll now do that if there are no friendly players around me in imminent danger of dying.

PvE DPSing during trash or on bosses will help accelerate the process. On most progression content, it won't really be an issue at all, since we're going to be way too busy healing. Personally, during idle time on farm bosses, I'll open a browser and catch up on some reading on some of my favourite blogs.

The last point still stands though. If you don't like the idea of casting any sort of damage spells, you don't need to.

Shifting to triage-style healing

I'm hoping all healers will get a quest like Triage in Cataclysm. For Alliance, it was out there in Theramore and for the Horde, it was in Arathi Highlands. This level 35 quest involved your applying bandages to soldiers with varying degrees of injuries.

That's exactly what the new approach to healing is. That's why we've got additional spells like Divine Light, Heal and Greater Healing Wave. We get a fast heal, a medium heal and a large heal. The fast heal is obviously going to be fast, but it won't be very efficient in terms of healing per mana. The medium heal will be the one used most often, as it strikes a balance between time, healing throughput and mana cost. The large heal will provide the most healing throughput and will be the most efficient. Downside is that it's going to take forever (in healing time) to get the spell off.

Increased health pools and other such changes are going to slow down healing. By slow down, I mean that we're not going to see tanks getting dropped in one or two shots as much anymore during raids. While I suspect reaction time is still going to be important, at least the collective blood pressures of healers can ease up somewhat. The trade-off is that our spells aren't going to immediately bring players from near death to full. It becomes more about maintaining health.

To summarize

• Everyone gets larger health pools.
• Tanks are not going to get two-shot.
• Focus is on keeping players alive instead of topping them off.

What about mana management?

Intellect is still going to have some effect on the size of mana pools. When it comes to regeneration, spirit is ultimately going to be the key stat to look for, as it will have a stronger impact on rate of regeneration. Yes, this applies to all healing classes. Meditation-like talents will need to be acquired by all healers.

Really though, it is still way too early to say how this will play out in raid settings. We still have assorted mana cooldowns to use. The best way to manage your mana is to make sure you really use the right spells for the right situation. You don't really have to watch your mana bars like a hawk, but that doesn't mean you should carelessly spam your largest spells without any kind of consequence.

I wish I had access to a beta. I would love to try out this new healing stuff for myself.

Cataclysm: Reaching uncrittable

by Gregg Reece Jul 2nd 2010 at 9:00AM

For those of you who don't know much about tanking, we're going to talk quickly about a stat that won't exist in Cataclysm. This lowly stat is called defense rating, and it's something that tanks need quite a bit of. The nice thing is that it's on just about everything that tanks wear, which means at higher gear levels, we've got it coming out of our ears. The primary point of this stat is to reduce the critical strike ability for incoming melee hits from the standard of 6% to 0%. Druids currently don't need this stat, as they've got a talent called Survival of the Fittest, which means that bosses don't need to drop defense leather.

All in all, the stat is kinda boring, as while it does still do nice things after you reach the defense cap of 690 rating (or 540 skill), most people don't bother with it and stack stamina or other avoidance. So Blizzard decided that they're going to get rid of it.

Around BlizzCon 2009, we were told that the crit reduction we formerly got from defense rating was going to be tied into things that were available to all members of each tanking class. Examples used were baking it into Bear Form for druids, Righteous Fury for paladins, Defensive Stance for warriors and Frost Presence (or rather, Blood Presence in Cataclysm) for death knights. That means that if a retribution paladin or arms warrior wanted to tank, all he'd need to do was swap to vaguely appropriate gear (or just over to a sword and shield), pop his respective abilities, and away he'd go. That's not how it appears things went down, though.

With the NDA now lifted, we've been able to see what they've decided. At level 40, you can choose to talent into Survival of the Fittest (three points) for druids, Holy Shield (one point) for paladins, Safeguard (two points) for warriors and Improved Blood Presence (two points) for death knights. The reasoning behind this appears to be one of health pools. With the re-itemization in the expansion, non-tanks will have a higher stamina budget all around and incoming damage even if you are critically hit won't one-/two-shot you.

Ghostcrawler

So this means that non-heroic dungeons should still be tankable by non-tank-specced players, leaving heroics to those who have put more dedication into that role.

However, one little discrepancy that I've pointed out but glossed over earlier is still about those talents. In order to be crit-immune, you must be level 40 for a paladin, level 46 for a warrior, level 41 for a death knight (yes, I know they start at 55, but 32 talent points worth in the blood tree), or level 37 for a feral druid. This might cause a small bit of trouble while leveling through Scarlet Monastery and honestly doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things when you're dealing with 76 talent points at level 85.

However, perceived differences are still differences in the community. There have been many flame threads from DPS specs comparing how much hit or threat reduction one class gets compared to another or even how many talent points must be spent to do it. I have a feeling that we're going to see the same complaints coming from the tanking community.

One possible solution to this would be letting the first point convey that 6% crit reduction while the other features of that talent scale appropriately points. This would mean that all four tanks would be able to achieve the same needed ability with the same dedication into the talent tree and thus at the same level for druids, paladins and warriors.

As will be repeated over and over for the coming months, we are still in beta, and all of this could drastically change or be baked into other features of the class. The crit reduction could be changed in some way between now and launch, or we could end up listening to the tanking forum bicker back and forth about it while waiting around for the Deathwing raid in patch 4.3 to drop. For now, the magic 8 ball says, "Reply hazy, try again."

Ready Check: First look at Cataclysm raids

by Michael Gray Jul 2nd 2010 at 11:00AM

There's been a huge splash of Cataclysm information released unto the wild in the last few days. Every since the beta hit the streets, we've seen information about warrior changes, hunters and even racial emotes. I guess I called it a splash. What I really meant is that there's been a flood of information everywhere. It seems like we can virtually see anything we'd possibly want to know about the expansion, right now.

But what we haven't seen yet is much information on raids. Our good friends over at MMO-Champion have some great information about 5-man instances, but their raid information is running a little behind so far. Of course, that's never kept us from drooling over new raid content before now, so let's not start bad habits. Let's take a look at what raid information we do have and spend a little time getting excited about the new expansion.

Bastion of Twilight

Let's go ahead and get the Twilight jokes out here. Take a moment to do that. OK, good to go? Let's talk about Grim Batol, the Bastion of Twilight.

We already know that the new raid design in Cataclysm is intended to be groups of smaller, shorter dungeons. The huge, labyrinthine raids with dozens of bosses should be firmly behind us. Raevyn's Cataclysm wiki indicates about a half-dozen bosses for most raids right now, based on the list of bosses involved with each raid's achievements.

The Grim Batol raid looks especially gorgeous to me. According to what we know right now, the fights for the Bastion of Twilight will be:

• Valiona and Theralion
• Halfus Wyrmbreaker
• Twilight Ascendant Council
• Cho'gall
• optional, nameless hard mode boss

Valiona and Theralion are going to be a joint fight, apparently. This is actually kind of a nice change, since we've not had a good couple fight since The Burning Crusade. It's hard to tell what kind of fight Wyrmbreaker could be from a mere name, but I think we all know enough about Council fights at this point to expect the Twilight Ascendants to be a bit of a pain in the neck.

What's really exciting about Grim Batol is that we get to fight Cho'gall! Yes, that Cho'gall. He's almost definitely going to be the final boss in the raid, which makes sense since he's one of the Twilight Hammer's head honchos. We can probably expect a heavy magic-damage fight, given the history of Cho'gall as a mage (though like all raid bosses, his melee will be tough enough to require a tank).

The only solid sounding achievements for the Bastion of Twilight are your generic "I beat this raid" and "I beat all the raids" achievements. There's no guessing what hard modes might be like, or what that hinted-at option boss might be.

But the Bastion of Twilight is only a four-boss raid. It's probably meant to be about an evening of raiding, once you have all the fights down. This is a pretty decent-sized raid, in my opinion. Judging from early screenshots, though, it's going to be a beautiful, moody instance. It's got a very purple color scheme, though, which is kind of a drag after spending time in the all-blue-all-the-time Icecrown Citadel. Still, for one night and a chance to throw down against Cho'gall, interior decorating should be the last of our concerns.

Blackwing Descent

Check out that picture up there. Dragons are dangling from the ceiling, dangling from hooks like a gutted carp. We haven't seen this level of dragon brutality since Gruul. And to make it even worse, this is probably going to be dragon-on-dragon violence!

The raid bosses of Blackwing Descent seem to be:

• Nefarian
• Magmaw
• Dark Iron Golem Council
• Maloriac
• Chimaron
• Atramedes

Unlike Grim Batol's Bastion of Twilight, however, we can glean much less from the mere names of the raid bosses. The Dark Iron Golem Council looks interesting to me. I wonder how much that fight might resemble the Iron Council from Ulduar, but that's probably just a naming coincidence. And, I'll admit, it's starting to seem like council fights are standard issue for any new raid. If so, I applaud the running joke.

Nefarian is back! Of course, we can't tell what the fight is going to be like in Cataclysm. We can't even be positive of his relative positioning inside the instance; I do hope he's not the first fight, though. It seems a little anti-climatic to shout, "Oh my god, it's Nefarian!" -- only to immediately realize there's another half-dozen bad guys right behind him.

Blackwing Descent is a definite descendent of the old Blackrock raids and instances. My running fingers almost instinctively wince at the idea of running for 10 minutes after a wipe. Blizzard's not so cruel nowadays, but still. Old, painful memories die hard.

I've already pointed out the dangling dragons, but pay special attention to the blood in vats. Zone detail that strong is almost guaranteed to be involved in some fight mechanic. It's not only thematic, it makes for a nice bit of foreplay to get your raid in the mood.

In conclusion

Like I said, it's way too early to talk too much about Cataclysm raiding. What we know is slim and based mostly on flavor names and beautiful screenshots. But it does look like beautiful content, and I can't wait to get my paws on it. I'm always impressed by Blizzard's incredible content for raiding, and Cataclysm certainly looks like they're stepping it up a notch.

Cataclysm Beta: Updated user interface elements

by Matt Low Jul 2nd 2010 at 1:00PM

Our friends at World of Raids are showing a preview of some slick changes coming to the user interface in Cataclysm. Some of the elements that have received an overhaul are:

• character panel
• leveling up
• spells and professions book
• trainers
• quests

... and more!

Just be warned that there are going to be a few possible quest spoilers in here, so you may wish to skip over this if you want to remain unspoiled.

Your character

Check out the new character pane! All of your stats are now in a collapsible area and have been moved over to the right side.

When it comes to leveling, here is what it looks like whenever you gain a new level. It'll be big and bright. Not only that, it will also tell you what new abilities will be available to you. This will save you a few trips back to the class trainer. Personally, during some of the earlier levels, I like to learn new spells every second or third level. Anyway, not only will you learn when new abilities and talent points will be available to you, but if you're eligible for different battlegrounds, the dungeon finder, riding types or glyphs, it will alert you here and in your chat window.

And you can click the "You've Reached Level X" to see the entire list of what will be available to you.

Professions

Here you can see the addition of the new professions tab in the spellbook. Buttons to access the various recipe panels can also be found here. And yes, those same buttons can be used for hotkey purposes. Information about the two main professions will be at the top (like blacksmithing and mining in this example), and all secondary professions are listed below. If your character hasn't learned them yet, there will be a message telling you to go see a trainer. Otherwise, it displays the amount of points your character has along with access to the different recipes.

For recipes, the recipe list looks a little something like this. You'll notice it hasn't really changed a whole lot. The search box and filter gets a bit of a minor face lift. What really got changed is that white arrow with the "3" next to it for the Fire-Etched Dagger. Crafting professions like tailoring and blacksmithing can now give multiple skillups when you're creating certain items. The recipe panel now tells you how many skillups you can get if it exceeds one skillup point. In this case, creating the dagger here will provide three skillups.

Trainer UI

Diggin' the new trainer UI? The left one is for your skills and the right one is for professions. The entire interface just looks cleaner over all. The visual icon, the name, level requirements and costs to learn are listed in an easily scannable format. Anything your character can't learn is greyed out.

Quest UI

Not quite sure who your targets are? If there's a specific, named NPC you need to go after and kill, you'll find that the quest UI has been updated to display a model of who you need to go find. In the shot above, I think it works the same way when you're looking for friendly NPCs.

Not only that, a new remote quest system is now in the game. In other words, you can receive and complete quests without having to hustle back to the quest giver. When you're ready to turn in a quest, you'll see an alert that notifies you of it.

Your minimap also provides an arrow directing you to the first quest in your quest tracker. Try to start with the quests that are closest to you, to make the process easier.

PvP

And lastly, you can see the new PvP panes. The left tab allows you to queue for standard battlegrounds. The conquest tab lets you try your hand at rated battlegrounds and arenas. The last tab enables you to create your own arena team without having to visit an arena master.

There are a few more UI elements that are new, but these are the big ones that caught my attention. If you want to see more, go ahead and check out Kody's excellent wrap up over at World of Raids. Stuff like the guild perks pane have not been implemented yet. Hopefully we'll see those sometime in the near future.

Contest - We have entered to be picked as a guild to do Beta Testing on Cataclyms.  We will have 9 spots open to fill.  Most of these are filled.  BUT I will take at least ONE random guildie to fill the spot.  You need to send me an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and tell me why I should pick YOU.