It looks like MMO Champion’s Cataclysm leaks were all pretty much right on the money. Cataclysm was announced at the opening of Blizzcon today, including all the reworking they’ll be doing to Azeroth.
You can see full detail Here.
A handful of things that we didn’t see in the leaks that I think are exciting include:
- More Raid Content than Ever Before: Enjoy more high-level raid content than previous expansions, with optional more challenging versions of all encounters.
- Archaeology: Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards.
- Ragnaros will return: leading an attack on hyjal
- Guild Advancement: Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements.
Frankly what excited me most here is the Guild Advancement. Guild levels? What are those? What do they do? What do you get for gaining levels? Examples they gave included mass ressurection for raiding, reduced repair costs, and who knows what else!
I think it’s really cool that they’re spending some time on guilds and helping to give them a sense of community building. Can’t wait to see what they have in store. Now if they’d only implement The House that Frost Built we’d be set.
More excited than ever for news of the expansion. It sounds like awesomesauce!
PS: Looks like gnomes will be the only non-hunter race.
I’m still giggling with excitement. Goblin hunters will be — to steal your word — AWESOMESAUCE! I can’t wait to see the guild levels and the reworking of good ol’ Azeroth. I wasn’t all that happy for WotLK, but Blizzard has me hook, line, and sinker on this new expansion. Where do I send the money? Can I have it now? Please?
I just hope I don’t have to buy Azeroth flying for 5,000g.
I still don’t get how undead can be hunters. Maybe if they were limited to buzzards, vultures, and hyenas…
Nah, their pets would eat them
From a lore perspective if they gave Humans the ability to be hunters then undead should get it. You could also say that about paladins, I think undead should have gotten paladins and taurens….i dont know. But it makes more sense to me to go that route. But w/e its going be interesting in the coming months.
Shark PET!!! SHARK MOUNT!!!
THAT would be AWESOMESAUCE!!!!
no more mana!!!!!!
i just saw the no more mana and the ammo no longer a consumable thing.
ive heard their lofty promises before, so ill wait before i do my dance.
im kinda annoyed that hunters are becoming ranged rouges
Here’s an excerpt from WoW.com’s liveblog:
5:11PM Fewer cooldowns on abilities for Hunters. Again, no more Aspect of the Viper, maybe it’ll do something else. Maybe. Ammo will become an item, not a consumable.
5:10PM Max of 100 focus. Will regen like Rogue energy, but a bit slower (or faster if using Steady Shot)
5:10PM Hunters now use Focus. No longer care about Int or Mana Regen or Aspect of the Viper. “GC said hunters are dumb!’
5:09PM Hunters are up. Mana = Gone!
If hunters use focus instead of mana, that won’t chance much. Instead of having a big pool you can empty, you’ll have a mini-pool you must keep up. We’ll still need things to make it go refresh faster, hence a viper-thing.
Personally, there is IMHO nothing wrong with mana, so I hope they won’t break something
I guess I’m a reactionary old fart, but I disagree with ammo being a “non consumable”. I mine ore and crystallized water to get my Mammoth cutters. I worked to get my dragonscale 28 slot ammo bag and it’s almost always full ( you can never have TOO MUCH ammo)
Some of the other things seem a bit “odd” but I’m sure I’ll manage. I have a low level Druid and the whole “focus” thing bugs me when in cat form…..with a bit of practice I’m sure it will be fine.
let’s do the math here, a shot cost 30-60 focus, max 100 focus, so 3 shots, or 1 big 1 little shot, focus regen 6/sec(12/sec with steady) so we get at the most 3 shots say instant cast, 6 sec with GC, there is 90 focus gone, 10 left, plus 18 focus that we regen in those 6 sec, so now we have 28 focus, and have to wait for more, if one of the shots is steady that would be 10 plus 24 so 34 focus so we can cast (that sounds sorta wrong now) 1 more shot. plus GC 4 shots in say 8 sec, and we are at 10 focus or 16 focus if the last shot was steady, and we wait……………not looking so hot now is it.
lilmatthunte, it seems as they want our peak-dps lower, while allowing us to keep our constant-dps (including viper-time) the same, and probably then even more steady as there is no viper-time.
Blizzard has been changing hunter mana as long as I can remember. In the vanilla days regen was good enough for PvE leveling. During raids you would then have to balance using your highest dps shots vs the most dps per mana. Kind of like healers need to preserve mana.
And then we could just carry a bunch op potions as we could use more than one per fight. This – correct me if I’m wrong was changed during 3.0 right? – was an important mana-nerf to us in a way!
When things progressed the amount of dps required to down bosses was just too high to stay with a balanced-mana-vs-dps rotation. You often just had to go all-out.
Of course this then resulted in us having to stack huge amounts of mana. This then let to the needed changes in viper in regen rate. At that moment it was broken and pretty much every patch Blizzard tweaked viper but they only managed to fill one hole with another. It stayed broken. (In their opinion that is.) Look at the patch-notes, almost every patch since 2.2.0 has some kind of change.
Today we are now stuck with very high peak-dps beating any other class, but it tanks when going fully-oom and into viper. It seems as blizzard wants this big spread gone.
thanks for that Armin, I guess it’s just some of the things i hated in vanilla are returning or so it seems. I just hate relearning again and again. I guess it’s a good thing i have a DK tank and can play him while i figure the hunter out again. Here’s to the hope they make some of the other changes that “we” hunter would like, not just the changes all the other class ask to change about hunters.
I’m really uneasy about the Hunter overhaul. But I guess that’s just because I’m barely in the front door on my hunter. I never really understood the mechanics behind her until I found this site about 3 weeks ago. That’s when the learning began. I fully understood the math behind the stats on armor. How to choose the best peice for my spec. And respecd my pet. My dps increased dramatically and I was totally stoked. I practically live on this site now. Lol I’ve linked to it on several other forums as well as to my guild.
I can see myself spending many nights here reading the new “How to not be a huntard” guides when the new expansion comes out. Cause I know once it does i’m gonna be lost all over again.