(Pre)Cataclysmic Patch 4.01

Where to begin, where to begin.  Well let me start by saying enhancement shamans still have their ghost puppies (yay!).  But stuff is changing quite a bit with this patch; some good changes as well as some bad changes so lets get to Bloodlusting.

Talents (or lack thereof)

Probably one of the biggest changes that we will be seeing is the 51 point talent trees getting a much needed pruning and are now 31 point talent trees as the result of Blizzard not wanting to deal with 101 point talent trees in the later expansions. Whatever the true reasoning behind the change, most likely to simplify balancing issues, it helps boil it down to picking talents that seem more like choosing how we want to play vs. “I must have x talent or I’ll be called a noob” (still true with ancestral swiftness).  Also talent trees are locked in to one tree until you put 31 points into it before branching out into the other trees.  I understand they present it as a way to help us focus on our main spec, but it also helps them prevent really crazy builds that take advantage of combinations of talents which would make us slightly more in line with our OP brethren.

Now you may have noticed something shiny and new in the elemental tree *cough* earthquake *cough*.  But I think it’s going to be even more awesome (in some ways) to continue being enhancement.  Probably the one thing that sticks out at me as fresh is the new mechanic for searing totem when talented.  We are now getting a debuff on the target which will stack to 5 and increases our fire damage from our lava lash by 20% per stack in addition to the extra fire damage dot it applies.  This means bigger and harder hits from our fiery offhand attack which is never a bad thing.  With the increased CD on lava lash it times out to be ready a little sooner than a 5 stack actually hits so it may be just as good to use LL whenever it’s ready.  I’m sure myself and a million or so other enhancers will be testing this and many other things out to try and re-maximize our dps.  But overall this mean that we can forget about magma totem unless we are dealing with trash aoe.

A couple other changes to note: Static shock is only triggered by Primal Strike, Stormstrike and Lava Lash now, but the proc chance has been increased to compensate, and Shamanistic rage no longer regens mana but instead allows us to consume no mana while active. And we lose 1 expertise from our unleashed rage talent but this shouldn’t affect us by too much.  If you are absolutely concerned about it you can always reforge some armor to compensate.

Glyphs

Glyphs got a nice overhaul in both the functionality of the glyphs as well as how we will be using them.  Glyphs now have 3 levels of functionality: Prime, Major, and Minor.

Prime glyphs are the ones that will make direct changes in our DPS, kind of like throwing gasoline on a fire makes it bigger.  With the changes to Searing Totem and Lava Lash, Glyph of Lava Lash will be one of our top 2 prime glyphs.  The other main one at this point is our Ghost Puppies glyph.  As far as the 3rd one goes, right now I’m using windfury vs. the other contender stormstrike, but with the way mastery can play into modifying spell damage, I might try out stormstrike for a while and see how it plays.

As for Major glyphs, these are more of a functionality change to our spells, rather than a straight dps increase.  Back to the fire example, it would be like not having to add fuel to the fire as often.  I picked up the glyph of Hex for reduced CD, glyph of Lightning shield which allows me to only need to refresh after it expires since it doesn’t go below 3 charges anymore, and shamanistic rage which also gets rid of magic debuffs when used.  There is a lot of flexibility with major glyphs so don’t be afraid to pick them all up and play around with them.  I’ve been thinking about swapping out for the fire nova one for trash and stoneclaw for pvp.

As far as minor ones go I had to pick up the arctic wolf considering how much more time I would be spending in ghost wolf form.  I also grabbed glyph of renewed life which has a bit of a history with me and water walking, because we all know Jesus was a shaman and fishing from sitting on top of a lake helps me get those prime fishing locations.  I dropped my astral recall glyph but now that i think about it if I know I’ll be hearthing back with frequency and don’t need to walk on water I can always do a quick switch with some dust of disappearance and be ready to go.  I do wonder though if I'm 8 min through my 15 min CD on astral recall and I switch it out if the remaining CD time will hit zero.  /add to checklist of things to try.

Level 80 retune

This is going to be somewhat tedious, but kind of fun.  With epic gems getting an overhaul, current gear dropping and reassigning stats, talent changes, we are going to have to check and make sure we are still hit and expertise capped, after all we can’t get those big hits if we aren’t hitting.

Off the top of my head I know we need 26 expertise and some amount of hit that puts us above 17% for spell hit.  Oh yeah that 3% buff you were counting on from the boomkin or shadow priest went bye bye so 17% if you have been relying on that before.  I was well over that, and at one point was sitting around 22.5% hit or about 1.5% from the hard cap due to the way upgrades were happening for me.  See if we had the reforging at that point I could have dropped that hit into haste or even better mastery stat.

Basically from what I have been reading at this point is it is best to reforge into hit and expertise from haste and crit since we can only do so with secondary stats and not our new prime stat of Agility.  Once we do this, then we can gem out for agility and be ready to rock.  Agility at this point gives us about 2 AP which in turn gives us SP so agility is a better option than haste.  Haste will most likely be more important come cataclysm raids, but for now I’ll have to *sigh* regem all those lovely haste gems.  I’ll be doing this slowly I think just so I can run some testing and see if it really is better with my play style.

But what intrigues me the most is the mastery stat since we can go ahead and reforge into it even though the first gear with the mastery stat on it doesn’t come until level 81.  Mastery for us enhancers translates to more spell damage. Basically you get 20% more fire, frost and nature damage at the baseline when you train it and then another 2.5% for every point in Mastery.

Live Impressions

So I’ve had some initial time to spend with things on live for reconfiguring my character and so far I’m liking the freshness, but still not sure if my dps is up, down, or about the same.  I can tell you that I’ve been hitting 20k Lava Lashes.  You heard right, 20K!  Looking at my recount Lava lash has gone from someplace down the list at 6th or 7th to usually 2nd on damage done during a fight.  Some of that might be because of some reforging I did, as well as searing totem and lava lash synergy.  When I logged on and set up my talents I found myself still over the hit and expertise caps so I didn’t need to reforge into either of those.  Although I might do some retuning to drop some of those expertise gems and replace them with agility.

But what I did end up doing was reforging a lot of crit rating into mastery rating.  I dropped about 4% crit but increased my mastery to get an additional 15% bonus to spell damage bringing the total to 35%.  That’s not a bad trade off considering I still crit about 60% of the time on melee attacks.  I did also replace my Agi + Haste gems with straight agility.  I ran a couple dungeons last night and it seems like I’m in the same ballpark on bosses, but until I get into the raiding scene and get all my buffs, I won’t have a solid idea on how I’m faring vs. before the patch.

That’s all I have for now, but I’m sure I’ll be getting more in depth about what all is going on once I have played around a bit more and get used to my new priorities.

Just remember, even after 4.0.1 dropped, they still want us shammies for our Bloodlust.  Until Cataclysm, when some other class is getting it.

Today my shaman died a little part 2

Still feeling a little hurt about losing my ability to take care of poisons and diseases in exchange for getting curse removal (and magic if talented into as resto), the final nail in the PvP coffin for my shaman was realized when looking at the warlock changes. I like to take a look at the changes to other classes so I can formulate strategies on how to best handle them in the field of battle; that is when I'm not just running around like a crazy man trying to demolish everything in my path. Anyways, the point that stuck out to me the most (considering recent dispel changes in the works)

Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom will be converted into Bane of Agony and Bane of Doom. Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. Curse of Elements) on a single target.

So let me get this straight. First we lose the ability to cleanse poisons and diseases, but we get the ability to get rid of curses...and now you are changing warlocks so the 2 primary curses we would want to dispel (considering they actually deal damage) and make them into magic effects.

Normally I'm pretty fine with changes that Blizzard has in store, but this is just ridiculous. For some reason they don't want us to succeed in battlegrounds unless we are resto(since they will be the only ones that have access to magical dispels)

I guess they were thinking "Lets take a class that has issues with PvP due to lower health pools than comparably geared others, and let them have no option to dispel any type of Damage over Time effect that gets cast on them so they can die faster."

Way to go. If things go through as planned, I probably will not set foot in a BG with my shaman come cataclysm.

"But you can play as resto", says Blizzard.
"But I'm enhancement", I said. "And I thought you said you were going to work on this survivability thing for us"
"That's why we gave you spirit wolves."
"I do like my spirit wolves. Maybe they can keep me company while all my friends are in the BGs getting Honor."

Shaman changes for Cataclysm

Ok. So I'll hold off on more Bloodlust fueled rage to talk about the awesomeness that is coming for shamans in cataclysm. I got a lot of content here since it covers all 3 specs, but there is some exciting info for every spec.

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we'll be making lots of changes and additions to class talents and abilities across the board. In this preview, you'll get an early look at some of the changes in store for the shaman class, including a rundown of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and an overview of how the new Mastery system will work with the different talent specs. New Shaman Spells

Primal Strike (available at level 3) : Primal Strike is a new weapon-based attack that every shaman will learn very early in the game. Our goal with this ability is to make leveling as Enhancement rather than as Elemental more viable, since many key Enhancement talents become available at fairly high levels.

Primal Strike sounds like a lower level version of Stormstrike. Kinda the one-handed deal. It will help us enhancers feeling more enhance-like at the lower levels. Anyone that has done their fair share as enhancement from 1-30 can tell you that it does feel a lot more like elemental than enhancement. not really relevant to me but still pretty sweet.

Healing Wave (level 4) : While the shaman already has an ability called Healing Wave, we're adding another spell to the class's direct-healing arsenal and giving it a familiar name. The current Healing Wave will be renamed Greater Healing Wave, and the intent is for the 'new" Healing Wave to be the shaman's go-to heal. Lesser Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave will be used on a more situational basis.

Another interesting change. It seems like Blizzard is trying to add a little flavor to our healing toolbox with a middle of the road heal to fit between lesser and our current healing wave. Anymore with enough haste and certain talents healing wave doesn't seem like it takes that long to cast, although occasionally it seems like an eternity when chain casting it on the tank as he whittles down the last 6% of Thorim managing to just barely keep him alive with each subsequent cast. (That was the only time we downed him and I picked up my shiny T8 shoulders of awesomeness.)

Unleash Weapon (level 81) : Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects (see below). A dual-wielding Enhancement shaman will activate the effects of both of their weapon enchants. Instant cast. 30-yard range. 15-second cooldown. Undispellable.

Here are a few examples of effects we're considering for this ability:

- Windfury Weapon – Hurls a spectral version of your weapon at a target, dealing 50% weapon damage and increasing the shaman's Haste for the next five swings.
- Flametongue Weapon – Deals instant Fire damage and buffs the shaman's next Fire attack by 20%.
- Earthliving Weapon – Heals the target slightly and buffs the shaman's next healing spell by 20%.

So this sounds really awesome. One it gives us another tool to use on the run, on a ranged mob/player, and gives us some nice effects to boot. As enhancemnt getting both effects with one cast is really nice. Currently if I could use this I would deal some melee and fire damage, and get haste for my swings as well as buff my next fire spell. This should help bring our dps up a little depending on how it plays out, but forcing a flurry effect by a button we can click is nice to time with BL/Heroism(for you alliance dawgs).

Healing Rain (level 83): An area-effect heal-over-time (HoT) spell that calls down rain in a selected area, healing all players within it. There is no limit to the number of players who can potentially be affected; however, there are diminishing returns when healing a large number of targets, much like the diminishing returns associated with AoE damage spells. This should give Restoration shaman another healing tool that improves their group-healing and heal-over-time capabilities. 2-second cast time. 30-yard range. 10-second duration. 10-second cooldown.

Once again I am liking new toolbox toys for resto to play with. If you spent much time with me in game you would think that I don't like healing much. I tend to play it down quite a bit and try to seem burdened when someone asks me to heal, but truthfully it is a lot of fun at times and things like earth shield and chain heal are just visually cooler than flash of light or circle of healing. I'm kinda a closet healer in this sense, but that's only because I absolutely love destroying things as enhancement(and a slight aversion due to people expecting me to be resto when I was a level 70 shaman. Even people that could click on me and see my gear)

But healing rain is like our druid's counterpart of tranquility and it isn't channeled. That is correct my resto sham friends. Just wiat for the cast time of 2 seconds and then you can move out of the fire you are standing in and still heal everyone. More aoe healing woo! I'm actually more excited to see what it looks like than the actual spell itself.

Spiritwalker's Grace (level 85) : When this self-targeted buff is active, your spells are no longer interrupted by movement and possibly even by your own attacks. This will give shaman of all three specs another way to heal or do damage when it's necessary to move in both PvE and PvP. Instant cast. 10-second duration. 2-minute cooldown.

Healing on the move? Yes please. This will be nice for a lot of reasons. Shamans can now move a little more and still cast spells. The way I read this it isn't like Maelstrom Weapon where it reduces cast time, but allows you to cast while moving. So when paired up with things like, oh Healing Rain, you can now move while doing your 2 second cast time so you can get out of the fire even sooner! I know this will be something that will excite our guild resto shaman quite a bit. Plus for us enhnacers and elementalists, it will help us out a bit with our mobility issues as well. Cast Lava burst on the run? Cast a chain lightning while MW is down? Savory goodness just got better.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to adding new spells, we're planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

• Restoration shaman and other healing classes will need to pay attention to mana more than they've had to during Wrath of the Lich King. Spirit will be the Restoration shaman's primary mana-regeneration stat.
• We're making changes to which classes and specs are able to dispel magic, diseases, curses, and poison, largely for PvP purposes. Shaman will have Cleanse Spirit as a baseline ability, but it will only remove curses. Restoration shaman will have a talent that will improve Cleanse Spirit so that it also removes magic. Shaman will no longer be able to remove poison.
  
  Booooooooooo. /cast Bloodlust /y Frothing PvP nerf RAGE!!!!
  I still don't see how this will fix our survivability issues.
  
  
• Cleansing Totem will be removed from the game, as we want dispels to be a decision for players, not something done mindlessly. To that end, all dispels will cost slightly more mana, and you will waste the spell if you cast it when there is nothing to remove. (Currently, the dispel is only cast when there is something to remove, which encourages spamming 'just in case.") We will balance PvE dispelling with this new model in mind.
• Totem of Wrath now will replace Flametongue Totem for all shaman, and dropping this totem will buff the group's spell power by 4%. Elemental shaman will have a talent that lets all Fire totems provide +10% spell power, allowing them to drop Searing, Magma, or Fire Elemental Totems without losing their spell-damage buff. The 4% and 10% buffs will be exclusive with each other and with the warlock's Demonic Pact, so you can't benefit from all of them at once. We're also considering letting Elemental drop Searing Totem at range.
  
  Nice. No more having to have Totem of Wrath down 100% of the time. Frees up the fire slot and still gives us a nice boost. Plus scaling bonus!
  
  
• We want to free up Enhancement global cooldowns to make the spec more dynamic to play. We're considering, for example, increasing the cooldown of Lava Lash so shaman have time to work other interesting abilities into their rotation.
  
  This would be nice. More buttons to push please! I really do enjoy pushing buttons and trying to figure out how they best go together. So much more fun than arcane mage 3 button rotation. Gotta make room for my Unleash Weapon button press.
  

New Talents and Talent Changes

• Elemental Reach will be simplified so shaman have a more consistent spell range.
• We plan to add Earthquake as a deep Elemental talent for targeted and persistent AoE.
  Sounds interesting. Maybe a land based Druid Hurricane style damage.
  
• Spirit Link will likely be worked back into deep Restoration in some form. The idea is that you will be able to link targets together so they share damage. When we had previously tried to implement Spirit Link, it was hard to balance and a little confusing. However, we really liked the concept -- and so did players -- so we are trying to bring it back.
  Didn't get a chance to try this out since it was in beta, but it did sound intriguing. Would work really well with chain heal, not to mention preventing a tank from eating a full cleave since the other tank isn't positioned correctly. Sharing is caring!
  
• Elemental will have a deep talent that allows Spirit (which will appear on the gear they share with Restoration shaman) to boost their Hit rating.
  That will help explain why we would actually want spirit on gear now.
  
• Ancestral Knowledge will boost mana pool size, not Intellect.
  More resources but still just as stupid.
  
• Enhancing Totems will be replaced with Focused Strikes, which will improve the damage of the new spell Primal Strike and Stormstrike.
  More stormstrike damage is always welcome.
  
• With the Mastery system, we're also considering removing a number of talents that grant passive bonuses, such as Mental Quickness, Improved Windfury Totem, Mental Dexterity, Call of Thunder, Tidal Mastery, Purification, Nature's Blessing, and others, to allow players more freedom to choose more interesting talents.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Elemental
Spell damage
Spell Crit
Elemental Overload

Enhancement
Melee damage
Melee Haste
Nature Damage

Restoration
Healing
Meditation
Deep Healing

Elemental Overload : Your direct-damage spells have a chance to proc a less powerful 'bonus" version of the spell. This will work much like the current Lightning Overload talent, but would also apply to Lava Burst.
Sweet. Secondary Lavabursts would be really nice(esp. in PvP) Although they are trying to get away from burst damage being mandatory for PvP.
Nature Damage : This will provide a passive bonus to the Nature damage dealt by the Enhancement shaman.
Also good. Could use elemental bonus, but Blizzard didn't want it to feel like just more damage. That way we can prioritize a nature damage spell.
Deep Healing : Your direct heals will do more healing when the target's health is lower. This will scale to damage (e.g. someone at 29% health would receive more healing than someone at 30%) rather than have arbitrary break points.
More healing at lower health! Woo. That fight with Thorim would have been a little lest stressful at the end with this.
We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback on these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress and is subject to change as development on Cataclysm continues.

More goodness to come later!

Today my shaman died a little.

A post over on the forums caught my eye (and need for something to calm my nerves so I wouldn't go on a frothing rampage of Bloodlust and Flurry) and caused me to cry out along with many other shamans as well as a few of the other healing classes. Zarhym started out by explaining some ideas about how they were going to change dispelling to help PvP and PvE (he later made a post about how they are keeping both in mind with these changes). Truthfully I'm not sure what to say other than as an Enhancement shaman I am not happy. I'll let you read the post, and interject comments as necessary.

We wanted to introduce some of the changes to dispel mechanics coming in Cataclysm. Our goals were to make dispelling a little less trivial to do in PvP, and to make sure there is more equity in dispel capabilities among healers in both PvP and PvE.

So far so good. Sounds like a good plan, a little "spread the love" mentality. And making dispelling more trivial in PvP sounds like a good plan. "Less think, more SMASH!"

Within the system, there are currently five types of dispellable (or curable) buffs and debuffs: curse, disease, poison, defensive magic, and offensive magic. An example of defensive magic dispelling would be using a dispel to free a polymorphed ally, while offensive magic dispelling would be utilizing a dispel ability to strip away an enemy’s buff or heal-over-time (HoT) spell. The main distinction between these two types is in whether or not you can target an enemy with your dispel.

Some clarification of the 5 types of dispels. Note defensive magic dispelling is magic dispelling used defensively and offensive magic dispelling is magic dispelling used offensively.

In Cataclysm each healing class will be getting three out of the five types of dispels, with one of these always being a defensive dispel magic. This design makes sure that finding a healer with the ability to remove magic isn’t restrictive in building teams for Arenas or rated Battlegrounds. It also allows the encounter designers to assume, when designing dungeon or raid fights, that every group can dispel magic.

More explanation and clarification. Sounds like there is going to be plenty of magic debuffs floating around on boss fights in cataclysm much like disease and poison was during the current expansion. So healers having the ability to remove magic debuffs would be a good thing. Preemptive note: should say "each healing class will have potential of 3 out of the five types of dispels".

In addition, we're making the opportunity cost (what the player could have accomplished with different actions) for dispelling a bit steeper. We think the cost is too low for three reasons: 1) The actual mana cost is low. 2) You never waste a dispel. If you try to dispel a debuff that isn’t there then the dispel just won’t go off. 3) We have spells that remove debuffs with minimal input on the part of the player. In Cataclysm we are raising the mana costs, making it possible to waste mana by casting a dispel when there is nothing to dispel, and removing Cleansing Totem, Abolish Disease, and Abolish Poison from the game. With these changes in mind, we are working to plan dungeon and raid encounters where dispels aren’t in constant demand or spammed in order to be successful, though some need for dispels will still be a part of the design.

/cry and beginning of frothing outrage. I understand making it a little more exciting for dispelling since truthfully dispelling can be easy and like they said doesn't have a downside since it won't fire if there isn't anything to dispel and is relatively minor mana cost. But the point that caught my attention was "removing Cleansing Totem" I'll wait a bit to continue my Bloodlust fueled rage, but I would like to say I don't like losing totem that are useful. (I'm Looking at you Sentry totem!)

As previously mentioned, we are providing three dispel capabilities to all healing classes as follows:

• Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
• Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
  
• Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
  
• Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.

Druid: check, Paladin:check, Priests: check, Shamans......wait a minute. Where is our disease and poison control.

There is some trade-off that is being made in making these changes and we wanted to expand on this further.

• Protection and Retribution paladins will lose their current ability to dispel magic.
  
• All shaman will lose dispel disease and dispel poison in exchange for Restoration gaining dispel magic.
  
• Restoration shaman, Restoration druids, and Holy paladins will need to talent into their defensive magic dispels.
  
• Shadow priests won’t be able to remove disease in Shadowform.
  
• Mage, hunter, and warlock will retain their current dispel mechanics.
  
• Body and Soul remains the same, and basically any dispel mechanic not mentioned above is currently planned to remain as it is.
  
• When possible, we’d like to combine dispels into a single action. For example, the druid ability to dispel curses and poisons might be a single spell with a Restoration talent that also allows it to dispel magic. This part of the design isn’t finalized, however.

Frothing rage resume. So let me get this straight. You are removing one of the best shaman utilies in PvP and occasionally PvE from our list of buttons to push, due to trying to spread out the love a little. Talenting into the dispel magic isn't that bad considering I already drop a point into cleanse as a shaman to get rid of curses. Magic was the one thing we couldn't do so it's completely logical to get rid of 2 of our dispels in exchange for 1 that can only be accessed by the healing tree. You might see where I'm starting to go with this as an Enhancement shaman.

We will be the laughing stock in PvP if this goes through. Enhancement shamans already having to deal with kiting, curses, and magic now will also have to just take the poisons and diseases. The only thing I will have left as an enhancement shaman is my purge button to offensively dispel magic. Looks like I can now cleanse curses. Whoopti-freaking-doo. I might as well just /afk out of battlegrounds if I ever find myself up against a Rogue or DK. Sure we were kinda OP against DK with our cleansing totem (once killed a DK in arena as resto, neither of us extremely geared) But every class has some sort of anticlass for the most part. Mages hate druids because they can't polymorph or root them, DK's hated shamans since a ton of their DPS relies on diseases being on a target. Cleansing totem was THE totem I used for water in PvP since it put me on level ground with rogues(if i could break the stun chain) and DKs (since plate wearing dps vs mail wearing dps needs a little help). I wonder if we will be good at taking down any other class now that this is potentially in the works.

True these are just potential changes and all the details aren't out for everything that is happening, but needless to say I feel like I won't be PvPing very much come cataclysm. Might as well re-roll on a PvE realm.

Or maybe I'll just PvP on my OP druid since I'll be immune to poly and can un-poly all my teammates to boot.

As with all of our Cataclysm previews, keep in mind that any of these decisions could change when we’re in beta.

The thread can be read here

WoW has pampered me

The other day I decided to revisit good ol' Diablo II. This was due to a lot of reasons; I hadn't played it for a long time, I remembered how much I used to play it, I needed something to kill a little time now and then that wasn't WoW to help prevent getting burned out on the game, it's still free to play, and the ladder was getting ready to reset.

For those of you that never really played Diablo II for one reason or another I'll surmise that it's a lot like WoW and not a lot like WoW at the same time.

Similarities
You play with other people online as a specific class (no race options) that often resembles a class in WoW. A quick rundown of class translation is something like:

Diablo II -> Wow
Barbarian -> Warrior (Fury/Arms/Prot they can do it all)
Necromancer -> Warlock (Minions, curses, spells for killing stuff)
Amazon -> Hunters (Although amazons sometimes use javelins and don't have pets)
Paladin -> Paladin (Auras a much bigger portion of their utility)
Sorcerer -> Mage
Assassin -> Rogue (With traps)
Druid -> Druid (But with wolf and bear forms; no tree form)

I could go into how all of them relate, but I'll leave that to another post.

You still kill bosses and monsters(mobs) get shiny drops (common, rare, unique, set, legendary items). You also have talent trees (3) to customize your character, a bank for storage, money for buying gear and repairing, and quests.

Differences
First off you get stat points in addition to skill tree points. This allows you to increase one of 4 stats: strength, dexterity, stamina, energy. Strength allows you to use heavier items, Dexterity allows you to use more complex weapons as well as increase hit and block rating, Stamina increases your health pool, and energy increases your mana pool. Yes even barbarians use mana.

There are 5 acts to the storyline with 6 quests per act (except 3 in act 4) which most can be completed or not. There are a few quests you have to do in order to be allowed to kill certain bosses since you have to open specific doors to dungeons and such.

The entire game is run around on foot, BUT there are things called Waypoints. They are basically like teleportation devices with one in each starting town for all the acts and a few in specific locations throughout the act. By specific i mean somewhere in a certain zone since the maps are randomly generated for each game. Basically if you find a waypoint you can use it to jump to any other waypoint you have ever found. The other mode of transportation is Town Portals. It's a spell that is cast with a scroll that creates a portal to town, allowing you to go to town from any location. The TP is closed when you go through the portal from the town side, or hostile another person in the game.

Speaking of being hostile, there aren't any factions, but you can flag yourself for pvp by going hostile to other players. This allows you to attack each other in the open field and if someone dies in this way they drop an ear. I still remember walking into games that were just for dueling and seeing the area outside of town filled with ears.

Gear
There are a lot of other little differences but one major one I really want to talk about it gear, and why WoW has pampered me so much. Gear in Diablo II can be a touchy subject for me. I've been known to log off for days due to bad situations with gear, wheras in WoW I just keep chugging right along.

First of different pieces of gear take up different amounts of space in your inventory. Everything has a specific size. SOme things take up 1 spot, some are 2x2, some are 2x3, 2x4, 1x3, etc. Rings, amulets, ears, small charms, gems, jewels, potions all take up one spot in your inventory. Headgear, some shields, gloves, boots all take up a 2x2 area. Chest pieces are 2x3, belts 2x1. Weapons mostly range from 1x3 to 2x3 to 2x4. And the inventory is 9x5 which basically means you can 't hold as much as you would like. The bank is decent but will quickly fill up as well. WoW is really generous in the fact that everything is only one bag slot so I can carry so much more(and for a while my mounts which were bigger than me!)

Now onto the main reason I have been papered by loot in WoW compared to Diablo II and the source of most of my frustration. Diablo II drops all the loot on the ground. You kill a mob and the gear is dropped on the ground allowing anyone else in the game to pick it up for themselves. If you don't have the right slot of space available for the item it simply flips in the air and drops back to the ground, unless you happen to have your inventory open and you can indefinitely hold the item until you swap it with something in your inventory or do some rearranging. Luckily there is a maximum of 8 people per game, but with only a couple rare pieces dropping off a boss one could essentially get everything that dropped if they can click fast enough. People are really greedy when it comes to gear in Diablo II. I admit I was one of those people. I figured out ways to cram as much stuff into my inventory and then some if I had help. One of the biggest reasons for this is gear is never soulbound. That means if you pick something up, put gems in it, put a socket in it, you can still give it to someone else or send it to an alt*. So basically you just grab everything you can and sort it out later. My recently made character hasn't gotten fast enough at clicking just yet and missed a couple things that would have been nice.

In WoW I run raids with my guild, most of whom I know in real life. We are a fun loving bunch and we make sure loot goes to the people it needs to go to. So I've been pampered and now have more of an appreciation of the loot system in WoW now that I have revisited the Diablo II version. If WoW just dropped gear on the ground, I would never roll anything but a melee class ever again. Cus we are closer to where the loot drops.

*Clarification on sending to an alt. There is no mail system in Diablo II. Transferring gear to alts consisted of trading an item to someone you knew IRL while you changed characters and logged back into the game you were just in to get the item traded back to you (or create a password protected game and just drop on the ground with your friend in the game to prevent it from being garbage collected) or take the risk of joining a game and finding a good hiding spot for it in town or outside that your alt can run to and grab the item before anyone notices and snatches your loot. My friend and I often had many occasions during our own games where we noticed people that looked like they might be in the process of transferring gear and on one occasion ended up with 8 sojs to share between our characters. I still remember that conversation.

"Give me back my sojs!"
"What's an SOJ?"
"The stuff you just grabbed. It's mine! SO give them back!"
"Oh you mean the stuff we just found lying on the ground?"
"Yeah. Give them back!"
"Finders Keepers man."

Model Viewer

Now presenting me!
Just thought I would give this a shot and see how it turns out.

Alts are the spice of Azeroth

I usually talk a lot about being a shaman on here, which is understandable considering the majority of my time on WoW is playing my enhancement shaman. Lets just face it, dropping totems and shredding faces is pretty awesome stuff. Not to mention the way those ghostly Shoveltusk heads pop out of my Tier 10 shoulders. Only thing more I could ask for is an extra couple spirit hands so I can dual wield 2-handed weapons.

But from time to time I feel the need to play my alts. I have many which vary from race and class combinations, to profession differences, as well as leveling mindsets. Overall I guess I'll just talk about why I created/play my different alts.

1. Tauren Protection Warrior
Current Level: 80
My first serious alt. I had been dpsing for quite a while on my shaman(with a little tanking back in vanilla wow dungeons, and I actually tanked King Dred the other day now that I think about it) and felt the need to make a tank. At the time it just seemed like the right class combo to do. Taurens look awesome in armor, and they are huge which makes them a bigger target for being a meat shield. Since I was making him a tank I didn't even bother with making him a fury or arms warrior first and then switching to prot. He's been prot his whole life, and it's all he will ever know. If I ever get to dual talenting him it will be for another prot spec.
The nice thing is I'm able to keep his bank very clean. If I pick up a piece of gear that isn't for tanking then I sell it or send it to my disenchanting alt.
My other reasoning at the time was a lot of the tanks I met in pugs were either morons or jerks. After having been a tank for a while I now understand where that jerk-ness can come from. Insider tip for not making a tank mad: Let him pull the mobs.

2. Holy Priest/Shadow Priest
Current level: 74
This one started as a DE and bank alt. I wanted to make a little money so I sent all my greens and blues that I could to this alt to disenchant, and then proceeded to level them as needed to progress their enchanting. Funny thing was I started getting a bunch of Bind on Equip drops that would be perfect for a healing priest. So that's when I got her set up as holy and proceeded to spend most of my level grinding in dungeons. Killing stuff as holy takes way to long, especially at the higher levels. by the time I hit outland, I decided to switch to shadow and instantly fell in love with it. I used to just stand there and let the alliance kill me. But once I went shadow, I got a druid 4 lvls higher than me down to 10% health before I died. I felt empowered by the darkness. I even healed a few dungeons still specced as shadow, which was a little tricky and got me some laughs. I mostly just use here for enchanting purposes which is why I haven't maxed out her level.

3. Death Knight
Current Level 70
Everyone has a Death Knight alt. Who wouldn't want to start at level 55 after grinding from 1-80 on a couple of characters?
I like to play him for the fun of it. I already have a good dps and tank so I don't have much need for him. He's also my personal glyph maker, which isn't as needed since I don't have to re-glyph everyday.

4. Druid
Current Level 71
Few reasons for starting this one. Ever since a couple of my friends and I rolled 3 druids on a server and then never got them past level 13, I kinda wanted to play one. That and certain ones were really annoying to kill in pvp (resto druids I'm looking at you) But I also needed an alchemist to supply me with raiding flasks, which I am now able to make. Cheap, albeit time-consuming at times, farming of herbs and making flasks. Plus flight form is pretty sweet. Especially since i can stay in it while gathering herbs.
Side Note: New killing method for resto druids on my shaman - Purge and auto-attack with Rage every now and then to keep my mana up. Eventually they run out of mana and then it's just funny.

5-9 Other alts
Level < 30
One of each class and a mixture of races. My pally is a human just because I'm holding out for my Tauren version once Cataclysm hits.

Overall the alt experience is fun, and a great way to learn some weakness and strengths of each class so you can know what to expect from people that actually know how to play them. Me personally, I suck at mages. But maybe it's just because I'm not up to the level where I can kill everything with 2 hits before it reaches me.

So whether you have an alt for a profession, or exploration, or because it's so much easier to pvp with, remember the deadliest alt of all.... alt F4.

Reincarnation of an Enhancement Shaman

I must say, it feels good to be enhancement once again. Great in fact. I had forgotten just how much I was truly missing my ghost puppies keeping me company. It's been long enough that I had forgotten the CD timers on a lot of the cool spells like Spirit Wolves, Shamanistic Rage, and the like. I couldn't remember just how much was due to patches that had come out while I was elemental.

Speaking of patch notes, I'll go ahead and talk about some of the most recent changes and what that means for my newly revived enjoyment of my shaman.

Earth Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Fire Elemental Totem: The cooldown for this totem has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.

Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to 30 minutes.

Talents

Elemental Combat

• Elemental Mastery: This talent now increases spell haste by 15% instead of critical strike chance while active.
• Improved Fire Nova Totem: Renamed Improved Fire Nova. This talent now provides an additional 10/20% damage to the spell and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 seconds.

Enhancement

• Earth's Grasp: This talent now also reduces the cooldown of the Stoneclaw and Earthbind totems by 15/30%.

Restoration

• Improved Reincarnation: This talent now reduces the cooldown of Reincarnation by 7/15 minutes, down from 10/20 minutes. Reincarnation cannot be used in Arenas.

Plenty of good stuff to talk about here. The majority of the changes are CD reductions on a variety of spells, and lets face it: the shorter the wait on the Fire Elemental the better. Since we didn't even get a new rank on either of our elemental totem spells grinding from 70-80, the least that they can give us is the ability to use it more often.

But something that is a really nice change is Fire Nova Totem is now just a castable spell which will work as long as you have a fire totem down. What's that? You want some AOE damage? I got your AOE damage right here. Magma Totem + Fire Nova = dead pack of mobs. I am loving this change and for once I can play with the big dogs of dps on trash pulls. Sure the really good ones should still out dps me, but watching the damage number fly up my screen always make me a happy dpser. The lure of this new spell was part of what encouraged me to respec to Enhancement. That and a couple new axes that dropped when no one else needed them.

I'm almost tempted to re-talent just a bit to get the extra fire nova damage and CD and throw in the FN glyph to boot to get a nice every 3 sec damage boost. The only downside is how much mana it uses. But this would only be really helpful during most trash pulls, and considering that the bosses are where my dps needs to count the most, I'd rather jsut stick with what I've got. Not to mention on any boss where there is movement (i.e. everything except maybe Deconstructor) recasting a fire totem to be near the boss in order to hit it with fire nova is a waste of resources.

What makes me the happiest about it all is I can manage to break 5k and occasionally 6k on bosses which just seemed impossible to me before. I remember barely even touching 3k at times so long ago when I switched to Elemental.

I think it was my time away that helped me the most however. After coming back to a spec that I hadn't touched for so long I had to relearn a little about what was important, what spells to use in combination, etc. It kinda of gave me a clean slate or fresh reboot on my thinking. You get so used to doing something one way that is successful and forget that things are always changing with patches, new gear, new stats, atmospheric pressure, network lag, addons, and genetically modified mice, all of which could play a role in doing even better.

Overall it feels like I had to let a little part of my enhancemnt self die before I could bring it back to life with a little help from my reduced CD Reincarnation. Some of you may think "You just weren't working hard enough on your class to begin with" or "Any good dps knows that they have to run sims and theorycraft for hours to get good dps" or "Shaman deeps is stoopid nOOb!!!1!11 lol lawls". Well I'm here to tell you that you are wrong, and I'm back and ready for action.