I brokes-ded it...

Fuck you Rotface.

The Zalazane ret con

Apparently I missed official blog rant day, but I've never let lack of official endorsement stop me before. Cataclysm spoilers ahead. Reader beware...

We learned today that the Darkspear Trolls chief Vol'jin is about to launch a final offensive on the Echo Isles, in an effort to retake his people's lost refuge from the traitor Zalazane. Which is odd, because I explicitly remember killing him. Repeatedly. Get this:

Over the years, members of the Horde looking to test their worth have braved the Echo Isles to confront Zalazane, and many of them have even returned victorious with his severed head. These victories, however, proved to be nothing more than an illusion created by the twisted witch doctor's dark magic. Days after these trophies were taken to Sen'jin Village, they reverted to their true forms: painted rocks and coconuts adorned with wooden tusks, or even the heads of Zalazane's enslaved trolls.

ORLY? Do you know how many times I died killing that piece of shit? Have you any concept of the time I lost on that agonising corpse run? Many before we got that ghost speed boost. That is one miserable corpse run. Those bastard trolls heal, and they run away at the slightest scratch, like a SPLINTER. Gadrin told me he was dead. He did not say I might have killed a coconut by mistake. Not once, not even after four years of failed adventurers bringing him creepy painted stones did he think to warn me the guys was a bit tricky. Thanks a BUNCH Blizzard.

No wonder those idiot trolls lost their island. It's not even a very big island.

Don't even get me started on Thermaplugg, the big dumb FAKE boss.

Cataclysm: new world order

We've been given the first concrete information about how the new gear stats will work in the expansion, Cataclysm. As you'd expect from something with such a name, it's going to be a bit of a shakeup.

The plan is for these changes to come into effect before the expansion is released, probably alongside wholesale talent revamps, so we have the joy of logging in one day in the not-too-distant future to see our gear reworked and our talents completely overhauled :)

It's much too early to worry about what this might mean for shadow priests. At this stage, in fact, very little would appear to be changing. Spellpower will vanish from our gear, while intellect and stamina will increase. Intellect will provide spellpower indirectly, so that we won't miss the lack of spellpower numbers on the gear. Hit, crit and haste will stay the same, and continue to function in the way you're used to. And spirit will probably vanish from most of our items.

The changes to spirit may be a cause for intrigue. This stat will no longer provide any benefit to caster dps. So we can expect talents such as twisted faith to disappear, as well as our mainstay glyph of shadow. We are promised mana regeneration in other ways — perhaps through buffs to dispersion and shadowfiend (although how shades are expected to level to the point where they can get them is another matter; this, we are told, will change too).

Divine spirit will go too, I assume, as we are told there will be no raid buffs for spirit in the new world order. To be honest, divine spirit was never the best buff in the world, but I like it. I like the shiny-blue-man icon, I like the connection it gives priests to spirit (their most idiosyncratic stat), and I like the fact that it's something melee don't want (I'm so sick of those DK buffs clogging my screen and making my hands glow). So I will mourn divine spirit and remember it fondly.

The spirit changes could actually cause many dual-specced priests a problem: we might be left with some big holes in our off-spec gear if we're not careful. It really depends on how Blizzard decides what gear currently constitutes "dps", how they convert that gear, and how they rework mana regeneration for healers. There is a chance discipline priests will need spirit as much as holy priests, so all those months of stocking dps cloth could leave us with a bit of a headache. We'll have to wait and see how this one plays out.

In the longer term, this change to spirit might go someway to restoring the once-rigid dividing line between healing and dps gear, and reduce the competition on healing priests for gear.

The introduction of a new "mastery" stat on items should also dissuade leather, mail and plate-wearing casters from rolling on cloth, because the intention is for this stat (function still a little vague at this time) to only apply to that item's primary class types (e.g. druids for leather, shaman for mail etc).

Things are starting to look interesting again. I can't wait for the bun-fight on talents to begin.