Return of the Rogue

A dimly light winters night was like any other night in northrend. A soft blue glow blanketed the land with breaks of moon light giving focus to the newly fallen slow. Cold wind blew across a remote town shooting daggers at any exposed skin this harsh night. Only a local tavern I frequented provides a haven where lonely travelers enjoy warm seating by crackling flame and hot food in their belly. This haven is my den used to lure prey into dropping their defenses. As the night crept on tavern dwellers became dreary and yearned for a nice soft pillow to rest their heads. An alliance warrior named Kartuish, I only know his name because he spoke of his heroic battles, staggered from the warm tavern into the cold dark night alone. It was a mistake many have made before but this was Kartuish's last time. I soon followed out after him, but not close enough to be spotted. I slipped into a dark corner and applied poison to my blades. Creeping closer I see Kartuish is adjusting his armor. Perhaps the wind has found a kink in all that plate, "How ironic" I thought as I drew my blades. I took this opportunity to leap from the shadows and stun lock my target. Kartuish is caught off guard when he is weakest and I am strongest. The true way of the rogue. Kartuish did not stand a chance to my flurry of stuns and attacks. His only hope was mercy, but I was short on that. After I collected what I came for shadows draped their way around me as I shifted back into their cloak. I thought to myself "It has been too long since I have been here" as I cleaned my blades drifting back into the night.

This is the return of my rogue. Alliance you have been warned.

What the future holds for WoW 11/04/09

Traveling into the future is not possible yet, but we do know ho to slow the present down letting the rest of the known universe pass us by on the grand time scale. Simply travel as close to the speed of light in any direction for x hours and come back to the future y millions of years later.

Time = speed+distance

What does this have to do with WoW? I want to give you a peak of my predictions, of what I think, lies in store for the future of WoW.

1. Class change service.
With the additional paid services like name change, faction change, gender change, and race change Blizzard is putting in place. Blizzard is getting pretty creative is extracting addition money for it's large player base. With a fairly new moto like"Take the player not the class" you know they are not opposed to giving the player base what they want.

2. Looking For Raid system to operate much like new LFG system
Blizzard is famous for building off what works. Cross realm BGs were just the foundation of what is around the bin for raids. With the LFG system going in place for instances Blizzard is just paving the way for cross realm raids. CRI will get polished for a few months then expect to see looking for raid changes going out.

3. Leveling speed increased and level cap stopping at 85 or 90.
Leveling has never been faster than it is right now, but that does not mean it can't go even faster. Expect to see options to start characters at max level after completing a series of phased quests, think DK starting zone, but coming out max level rocking the blue gear. Class balance is all about talent points. The more talent points to deal with the greater the difficulty of balance. Honestly I could go without ever having to level. Just scale the dungeons and mobs for a tier of gear. If your char does not have x then mob hits for y and has z health.

When these changes go into effect you can link this blog and say "Told you so".

The great Paladin Nurf of 2009

Ahh Paladin class I barely knew you. It was bound to happen again and it has. Paladins are getting hit hard with the nurf bat and Blizzard took a few steps back before pummeling the class "into the ground" this time. Here is the great Paladin Nurf of 2009 breakdown...

Flash of Light: This spell no longer causes a heal-over-time effect unless the player has the Infusion of Light talent.

Aura Mastery: This effect of this talent has been reduced in duration to 6 seconds.

Finally the big nurf to Paladins outside of arenas...

Lay on Hands: This ability now places Forbearance on the target and cannot be used on a target with Forbearance.

PVP
You can hear the cheering on the forms about this one. LOH has been the 20 minute cool down oh shit spell for the class since the beginning of wow. It was used in duels to make other classes cry, nah beg, for mercy. The order of pvp was Fight until low health > bubble > full heal > back to fighting until low on health > LOH > back to fighting.

PVE
This is a huge nurf to PVE healing. Paladin tanks with Paladin healers are getting the shaft. Paladin healers are going to have to work around this nurf with BOL the MT and LOH the OT. I guess the MT should be BOL all the time.

Armor type rolling
For the longest time Paladins had to wear cloth to heal, leather and mail to dps, and armor to tank. Paladins needed to roll on other gear because they had none of their own. The Blizzard released set or healing/DPS/and tanking plate. But Blizzard never removed Paladins option to "use" other types of gear. That is until patch 3.3 drops on the live realms. So get your cloth, mail, leather rolls in because you won't have the option come patch 3.3. *sigh*

Good bye quickly gearing out Healing Paladins
Hello slowly beating your head against the wall while looking for gear.

Final thought
Priests are getting some pretty nice buffs in healing and shadow. Guess it's time to return to my roots as a raiding disc/shadow priest who's only goal is to make Warlocks cry.

Top of the meters here I come again...