Blizzard has released an extensive list of patch notes for the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor beta. Expect the changes to come soon, but remember these are a work in progress. Not all changes listed will be put onto the servers.
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One of the big additions coming to the ravaged world of Outland is that numbers will no longer be astronomical to comprehend. As put on the official battle.net site, "Your stats and damage have been reduced by a huge amount, but so have creatures' health. For example, your Fireball that previously hit a creature for 450,000 out of its 3,000,000 health (15% of its health), may now hit that same creature for 30,000 out of its 200,000 health (still 15% of its health). In effect, you will still be just as powerful, but the numbers that appear will be more easily parsed." Because math is hard.
As a former WoW addict where I spent my time soaking in damage, tanks of the world are getting a new passive ability in place of Vengeance called Resolve. Instead of upping one's DPS during a fight, and causing all sorts of mayhem with the healers, the new ability will "Increase your healing and absorption done to yourself, based on Stamina and damage taken (before avoidance and mitigation) in the last 10 seconds." Additionally, Warrior tank damage will be improved significantly to offset the loss of Vegeance.
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Fans will rejoice: hit and expertise are being removed. Like THAC0 in original D&D nobody understands them and nobody likes them. The two stats acted as a sort of barrier for entry; you need x amount to get in, then you can start focusing on increasing your damage.
"All characters now have a 100% chance to hit, 0% chance to be dodged, 3% chance to be parried, and 0% chance for glancing blows, when fighting creatures up to 3 levels higher (bosses included)." Tanking specializations receive an additional 3% reduction in chance to be parried. Tank attacks now have a 0% chance to be parried vs. creatures up to 3 levels higher.
The list is extensive. Some other highlights include:
- Removal of a majority of PvP crowd control skills.
- All characters now learn a few important Major Glyphs automatically as they level up.
- Racial traits have been rebalanced so that all races have similar combat performance.
- All classes have had several abilities pruned, with a focus on redundant and less-used abilities, to cut down on button and keybind bloat.
- Professions no longer have combat benefit perks tied to them.
And several major overhauls to each of the game's classes.
What World of Warcraft began as and what it is now is completely different. The game has gone through so many iterations, so many changes, many good, a few bad that it's simply stunning. The game is the #1 MMO in the world for a reason and the constant updating is definitely key. In the cut-throat world of video games, you have to reinvent yourself constantly. Nobody does it better than World of Warcraft.
