All Information you need to know about the WOTLK Patch

[ShAnX]

This Might Be a Repost, but I couldnt find anything On this topic, And This was Copied off of the Official WOTK website.


Many players are vouching their concerns and also sharing their thoughts on how the new spells, abilities and talent trees are working out in Wrath of the Lich King so far. Blizzard employees have been very active in replying and sharing information on how the current status of each class is and what the plans are for the future.




Death Knight - New Frost disease called Frost Fever
DKs now have a disease called Frost Fever. Icy Touch is a delivery mechanism for Frost Fever, and the disease's debuff is basically the old Icy Touch debuff. A lot of Frost abilities now key off of enemies infected with Frost Fever, similar to the way Blood Strike works. This solves a lot of problems while still getting the fun shatter-like combos, and it has way more synergy with the other DK abilities. The guys who have tried it think that everything just flows better now. Hungering Cold and Chains of Ice still do bona fide freezes, so the frost mages will still like to hang out with you. It's very... ahem... cool.


Death Knight - Mind Freeze is no longer affected by the global cooldown
Mind Freeze does no damage now and is off the GCD.



Death Knight - About the DK kitability
AMS hasn't got a lot of attention since it's a high-level spell and we haven't had a number of high-level DKs yet. It should not be dispelled and it should affect dots and AEs. Silence preventing it is by design (at least for now). DK kitability is something we're keeping a close eye on. We don't want them to be charging around the battlefield -- that's the warrior kit. We gave the DK a number of ranged abilities for a reason, but I'm not going to argue that they are 100% effective yet.


Death Knight - Tanking/Threat and Taunt Mechanics
Blood Boil and Death Grip are both true taunts. We discuss a lot whether the DK needs a simple warrior-like taunt. Blood Boil and Death Grip are both fun abilities, but they serve multiple purposes. Death Grip for example would be way too powerful with a 10-sec cooldown. I will note that with the upcoming disease changes that getting a disease on targets is much easier now. That will make managing groups a little easier, but it may not be enough for moments when the mage accidentally pulls. It's something to keep in mind as you guys run more Lich King instances.

Death Knight - Why don't Strikes that use 2 runes give x2 Runic Power?
The logic is that double rune abilities are already packing twice as much damage (or equivalent power) into the same unit time. If they also generated twice as much runic power, there would be an even bigger incentive to use them instead of single rune abilities.


Hunter - About the Devilsaur pet size
The devilsaur is an exotic pet that will ultimately require 51-BM to tame. There are several other exotic pets that are not implemented yet. (The moth is not an exotic pet.)

The size of the devilsaur is not a bug, but I also can't promise it's going to stay that way. It would be awesome if it did, but only if it doesn't cause a bunch of other problems, like clipping through terrain and making it impossible to see mailboxes in Dalaran.


Mage - New ability to replace Shatter Shield
We nuked Shatter Shield and put it into a talent instead (as you've noticed). The new Mage ability has yet to be unveiled...



Mage - Mana Shield future changes
We're talking about it...


Mage - Living Bomb is unfinished
We've considered giving it a knock back or *ahem* "knock up" but we felt that probably wouldn't be desired for what Living Bomb is made for. It works for Thunderstorm (Elemental Shaman Talent) because Shaman's aren't an AOE class, and because it's cooldown controlled. I don't think we're done yet with Living Bomb, just not completely sure with what we want with it yet.


Paladin - Beacon of Light being tweaked
We're working on tweaking this spell a bit to make it fit the Paladin's "kit" a bit more... look for the change in an upcoming build.



Paladin - New abilities still need to be polished
Like I promised, the paladin changes were more sweeping than most changes. As such, it's going to take us some time to go through a second pass on the abilities and get everything polished up enough to evaluate the shiny, new paladin. I expect we'll be a lot more active on this forum when that happens.


Priest - Mind Sear's mana cost too high?
If you've noticed a lot of the ranks have similar mana costs, though I do agree Mind Sear's mana cost seems particularly high... I've been assured that the mana costs for the new ranks of spells and for the new spells are accurate in relation to the mana pools players will have with the new itemization. We'll make sure the mana cost isn't offensive when we do some internal raid testing in the coming weeks. We also made the ability not work on the primary target because we didn't want Mind Sear to be used as a ghetto Mind Flay and because we found it was annoying when the target you were casting Mind Sear on died, causing you to re-cast it. There's also some interesting gameplay for the ability that you may not of thought of yet



Priest - Threat generation of Aegis/Shields
I am concerned about this, and will make sure it's not too much of a problem. If it is, we can always do a glyph or talent that causes the target to regen rage/runic power etc. when they absorb damage through your spells. That will be a last resort, however.


Warrior - Protection Tree Information

Anticipation - Defense is usually a pretty easy stat to max out with gear, whereas you can't really do that on dodge. We saw some tanks actually spec out of Anticipation at the T6 or so level because it just stops being as useful as your gear improves. Hit is another stat we don't really like to hit in talent trees, since it's possible to hit the cap with gear alone.
Improved Shield Block - The problem with the old Shield Block was it was never a choice. It was available so often, and always so useful, that you could just about put a brick on the key you use for Shield Block. We're trying to get Shield Block to feel more like a mini-Shield Wall. Use it when Something Bad is about to happen. We're not trying to nerf it -- we're trying to make it more fun.
Improved Taunt - This has always been a delicate talent to balance. The more you run with pugs and the more 5-player instances you do in general, the more useful it is. In raids, especially with people who really know your play style and manage their threat, it's a lot less valuable.
Stalwart Protector - We have to be careful with this talent because prot warriors are going to generate a lot more rage than before, just because their dps is going to be higher. A lot of tanking gear comes with strength now. Strength is a good stat, and even before the shield block change, it was probably the best +threat stat you have. I sort of feel that for too long we have all emphasized mitigation as the primary role of a tank, when in reality it's only half the job. Doing more dps will let tanks be more fun when not-tanking, and for warriors, might make a lot of rage starvation issues go away.