Well unless you’ve been hiding in a cave on the moon you’ve heard some information about World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion: Cataclysm. Before I get into the rogue perspective, let’s get an overview of the main features we know about the expansion.

Cataclysm

General

• Level cap will be 85 because developers wanted to focus on the right things: redoing Azeroth and providing more end-game content.
• A new guild advancement system  will let you earn guild perks and level a guild through 20 levels with points to spend in a talent tree. You will access abilities such as cheaper repairs, less durability loss on wipes, or mass resurection.
• Phasing can now add and remove terrain based on your progress. Coasts will be progressively more flooded depending on how far you are in a storyline for example.

Path of the Titans

• Talent trees won’t be extended, you will just get 5 more talent points.
• The Path of the Titans will let players follow a path (not restricted to classes), this is a new talent system with new skills and passive abilities.
• A mastery system is being added as well, a lot of talents will be reworked to be more fun. The point is to get rid of a lot of the talent skills and not make you spend all your points in a talent tree just because it gives you more damage or higher crit chance.

Archeology

• Archeology is a new secondary profession, not many details about this one but we’ll probably hear more about it in future panels.

Deathwing

• Deathwing, the leader of the Black Dragonflight will be the main vilain of the expansion.
• Deathwing heard the whispers of the Old Gods after the arrival of the Burning Legion, he eventually grew very powerful and also became very very crazy.
• His plan was to catch the Alliance and Horde unaware with something so massive that it would bring up the Elemental Planes.
• The Elemental Planes were created by titans to contain the elementals, they weren’t happy with this decision and some of them like Ragnaros got really angry.

Old World

• We all left a little part of ourselves in Northrend and the old world will be much darker than it was to make heroism and brotherhood more meaningful like Warcraft should be.
• Every zones will be revamped with new quests, items, and art. The old world will be a brand new experience and you won’t have to deal with the annoying agility/spirit quest rewards anymore.
• Azeroth is now flyable. Pretty much all the zones will be changed to some extent, some of them like Elwynn Forest won’t change too much but others like The Barrens will be sundered in two by Deathwing.
• The Wailing Caverns are now a lush and verdant Area.
• Desolace now has a lot more waters and a lot of plants can be seen in the screenshots.
• The Horde finally conquered Southshore.
• Auberdine was destroyed and the night elves have set up a new camp north of it. Garrosh wants to expand the horde and has built a fortified camp at the south of the zone.
• Stonetalon has been cleaned by the Goblins, Azshara will be the new Goblin zone, and are using quarries in the mountains of Azshara to build their town.
• Apparently Orgrimmar will be rebuilt and reinforced with steel, it now looks a lot like Garrosh strongholds…
• Undercity has been redesigned to be flyable, it now looks much more impressive from the outside.

New Races

Alliance – Worgen

• Other races were discussed for the alliance, but the developers really felt that the alliance needed a monstrous race and horde needed something fun and tiny.
• Genn Greymane closed the Greymane Wall to block the Scourge’s plague. Gilneas got nervous as the Scourge progressed to the south.
• Arugal was a patriot, he called the Worgens to battle for Gilneas but eventually was surprised by how dangerous what he called down was.
• Worgens are from somewhere else … or even someWHEN else. They have a wolverine temperament and spent a lot of time trying to contain the beast within.

Racials

• Darkflight – Activate your true form, increasing movement speed by 70% for 6 sec, every 3 min.
• Viciousness – Increase damage by 1%.
• Abberation – Reduced duration on Curses and Diseases used against you by 15%.
• Flayer – Skinning skill +15, you skin creature fast, and you don’t even need a knife.
• Worgens can be all classes except Paladins or Shamans

Horde – Goblin

• Goblins are a technological race from Kezan, their society is broken up into trade cartels run by trade princes. They are new factions and not the ones you can already see in game.
• The Cataclysm hit Kezan really hard and it’s possibly destroyed. The goblins are now refugees on the Lost Isles.
• As a goblin you start as a neutral cartel and eventually join the horde as you progress through the questlines.

Racials

• Rocket Jump – Activate your rocket belt to jump up to 20 yards, every 2 min
• Rocket Barrage – Fire your belt rockets at an enemy within 30 yards, every 2 min. (Shared cooldown with Rocket Jump)
• Time is money – Cash in on a 1% increase to attack and casting speed.
• Best Deals Anywhere – Best possible gold discount, regardless of reputation.
• Pack Hobgoblin – Calls in your personal servent, allowing you bank access every 30 min.
• Better Living Through Chemistry – Alchemy skill +15, Your potions give more health / mana
• Goblins can be all classes except Paladin or Druids

Other Races

• Updates and racial balancing is coming

Race and Faction Changes

Race changes will be available shortly after Faction changes. There is no point in not allowing that since you can’t really prevent people with multiple accounts to play both side on PvP servers anyway.

Stat Changes

Stats simplification
What we were finding is that in many cases things had just become so complicated that players were not making intelligent decisions based on their knowledge of how various stats benefited them. That sounds like what you wanted to have happened, but it really wasn’t. Instead players would pull up a BiS list, or plug the item into a spreadsheet. If the answer was “upgrade” they equipped the item. We could pretty much just give the items a name and art and make all the stats not displayed.

If you were one of those players who picked up a piece and understood how armor pen vs. attack power benefited you or whether defense was still worth collecting after you had hit crit immunity, then you were in the minority. Hopefully we can get back to a system where eyeballing an item’s stats has some chance of being right.

In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, there are plans to streamline the statistics found on items. We want to remove all unnecessary stats, make all existing stats understandable, and make all “core” stats more appealing. Here are some examples of such plans.

• MP5: This will be removed from items and replaced with Spirit. All healers will be given a meditation-like ability.
• Spell Power: Spell Power is being removed from items as well. Don’t panic, we’ll be improving Intellect so that it provides mana and Spell Power.
• Attack Power: We’re removing Attack Power from items as well. Instead, we’re allowing Agility to provide the necessary Attack Power for leather and mail wearers. Strength will provide the appropriate amount of Attack Power for plate wearers. This means leather and mail items will no longer be desirable for plate wearers.
• Defense: The Defense statistic is also being removed from items so that players no longer have to worry about juggling around “the cap.” Tanks will receive the necessary anti-crit from talents, like Survival of the Fittest.

• Haste: Will also increase the rate at which you gain energy, runes, and focus. Retribution paladins and Enhancement shaman will have a talent that allows them to take advantage of this benefit.
• Block: Block Value is being removed. Blocking will now always mitigate a percentage of damage.
• Stamina: Players will notice more Stamina on gear as Defense, Spell Power, Attack Power and Armor Penetration are removed.

• Armor Penetration: This ability is too confusing and “mathy.” It is being replaced with Mastery, a stat that makes you better at what you do.

Mastery

• There are too many talents right now and a lot of them are boring and just give passive bonuses. (1% hit bonus, etc …)
• The goal is to make talents more fun and useful, Body and Soul or Juggernaut are a good example.
• The old passive bonuses will be automatically added to your character through the Mastery system as you spend more points in a talent tree. Spending a lot of points in Fury will give you extra crit, etc … this will be implemented for all classes.
• Mastery bonuses will lower energy cost, increase your armor penetration, etc …

Path of the Titans

Path of the Titans is another great new feature. This new feature implements a third new type of glyph called “Ancient Glyph,” and as you can see, it is themed after the titans. These special glyphs are not associated with the Inscription tradeskill, and are also not specific to any class.

You’re able to unlock a path and progress within that path as you continuously engage in different aspects of the game. As you advance, you will be able to unlock special glyph sockets for your character. You can also respec your path at any time, in case you decide to change your path.

You earn these ancient glyphs by using the new Archaeology secondary profession to recover and trade in titan artifacts. Each path will have 2-3 choices per rank, and again, you can respec if you decide to go down another path.
– Path of Aman’Thul, the High Father
– Path of Eonar, the Lifebinder
– Path of Norgannon, the Dreamweaver
– Path of Khaz’Goroth, the Shaper
– Path of Aggramar, the Avenger
– Path of Golganneth, the Thunderer

You can earn progress down any of these paths by doing things such as questing, raiding, PvP, trade skills, etc., with a possible weekly cap for maximum progress. Over time, you’ll be able to unlock new ancient glyphs that will greatly benefit your character.

This new system will be accessible to all players at max level. Players will eventually be able to reach new ranks for ancient glyphs, encouraging them to further develop their characters. There is also a possibility that we will introduce whole new paths in future content patches.

The Trailer

Rogue Perspective on Cataclysm

• They want to see rogues use more daggers, they’re THE rogue weapon and we don’t see enough of them. In Patch 3.2.2 they might add an assassination talent to make daggers more attractive.
• One of the plans for cataclysm is to take a lot of the early subtlety tree and make it passive for the class. The unattractive stuff will be taken out to let you get the cool talents.

This is great. Early sub talents really are necessary and abilities like imp sap, master of deception or camo should have been made passive a long time ago as PvPing without them means our staple unique ability, stealth, is clunky and problematic.

I think the dagger concept may be accurate and it’s fair that they want us to use them, but I think the amount of rogues that use daggers at the moment for PvP is already more than enough. I think weapon diversity isn’t a bad thing but this information is somewhat vague so we’ll see how things progress.

Stat Changes

These stat changes really have a lot of potential to make the lives of rogues a lot easier. As it stands, rogues have a lot of statistics that we need to balance in order to be effective. The removal of attack power and armor pen will help because in reality having to stack a certain stat as a rogue usually means a loss in some other offensive stat. A good example hear is current gem choices. You have a lot of rogue who choose between agility and attack power, having to focus on one or the other. The fact that there is a choice means that there must be some sacrifice when choosing a stat, and hopefully with these changes that won’t be the case.

The haste change has a lot of potential as well. Currently haste is a very awkward stat that just kind of comes with our gear. When you look at the current iteration of haste in PvP for rogues it leaves a lot to be desired. Having a stat that increases energy regen should open a lot of doors.

Assassination Raiding fix Coming

…we drop daggers in raids. The only people who are super interested in them are Assassination rogues, but they have fallen behind Combat. We might boost Assassination without buffing its burst. Probably not through a new talent.

In 3.2 daggers have really fallen behind so this is good news for rogues that like stabbing instead of hacking.

Some other Interesting Cataclysm Features:

Cross Server LFG

• This will let you PUG 5-man instances and search for groups through multiple servers.
• It will come with its own reward systems. If you’re the leader of a PUG and complete the dungeon succesfully you will be rewarded.
• It should be out for patch 3.3.0.

Cataclysm PvE

• 4 Raids : Grim Batol, Skywall, The Firelands, Blackwing Descent
• Dungeons : Grim Batol, Uldum, Deepholme, Skywall, Abyssal Maw, Blackrock Caverns
• Old World Heroics: Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep

Tol’barad

• Tol’barad is a mix of Lake Wintergrasp and the Isle of Quel’danas.
• Every x hours the Daily Quests of the zone will shutdown and players will fight to capture the control points, the first team to get all of them wins.
• The winning team gets access to better daily quests rewarding more gold/better items.

Reforging

It’s too early to go into a lot of detail on the new features, but the basic idea here was to make an undesirable drop possibly more desirable. It still shouldn’t compete with gear that is actually itemized for you.

As an example, letting someone turn stamina into a dps stat is something we’d be unlikely to do (or at least impose a lot of restrictions) since that lets you turn an undesirable stat for most characters into something good.

Think of reforging more as a consolation prize or as a way to work around things like hit caps, and not the kind of thing that clever players are going to be able to use to vastly min max their character power.

So hopefully that gives you an overview of the expansion. Next article I’m going to go more into opinion about it, whether this is will save WoW or kill it, a rogue wish list, and what it will take for this expansion to be a success. I will say now that there is a lot of potential here, but that being said WOTLK had a lot of potential as well and ultimately I think everyone can agree it missed the mark. More on Cataclysm to come at roguerogue.com!

Rogue
Fan of Knives nerf in 3.2.2
We sat on a change for awhile because we hoped FoK spam was a flavor-of-the-month thing. We thought there was a chance the community would come up with a way to counter it, and since it’s pretty much a one-trick pony, there would be no reason to keep trying it. The community absolutely comes up with counters on its own — the answer to every new strategy should not immediately be for us to nerf it. We also hoped the resilience changes would chill out the damage enough that rogues would stop pursuing FoK spam. That doesn’t seem to be happening.

It is a nerf in PvE, but honestly it’s probably a nerf that was also needed. We wanted to give rogues some AE damage, and we were okay with the big numbers for a long time because they were big when fights were short, but not as good over longer AE fights. (Protip: AE doesn’t just equal trash these days.) Few people would argue that rogue single-target dps on most fights isn’t amazing (“jaw-dropping”? ). As long as rogues can still contribute meaningfully to AE fights, which they will be able to do, they shouldn’t be in any danger of being sidelined.

It’s possible some select fights, notably Yogg 0, may be too difficult without the interrupt, but the encounter designers are prepared to make changes accordingly, and everyone will have access to better gear in the new raid tier anyway.

I asked a rogue in our guild if she thought Blizzard would nerf Fan. She said “They probably need to, but it was fun while it lasted.”

The greatest casualty is probably the loss of so many FoKing puns. (Source)

So some 3.2.2 notes are out and FoK is getting a significant nerf:

Rogue

• Fan of Knives: The damage done by this ability has been reduced by 30%.

Combat

• Throwing Specialization: This talent no longer causes Fan of Knives to interrupt spellcasting.

Subtlety

• Honor Among Thieves: A 1-second cooldown is now enforced on how often a rogue can gain combo points from his party via this talent.

While this is a significant nerf to combat PvP, and rogue PvE  AoE, I think in the long run it’s a good thing. Firstly, combat PvP FoK spec in it’s current form is absolutely ridiculous. It changes rogues from a single target burst / stunlock class to a knife spewing machine with the “I win” button of skilling spree. When I think of what the rogue class should be in arena, it’s definitely not an aoe PvP cleave class that sprays knives and interrupts. This spec brought our class in the wrong direction PvP wise and it’s viability can only serve to waft smoke in front of our real concerns. There was no way this spec was going to last and the fact it was viable at any point to just spam FoK and finish people with killing spree is just as bad as any ret pally or dk in this expansion. It’s better it got fixed earlier than later.

Regarding the Damage reduction placed on FoK, for PvE it really isn’t the end of the world. Yes, FoK is nice for some encounters and certainly is so for trash, but rogues strength is not in our AoE. FoK was often a tool to “cheat the meters” on some encounters when single target damage is the better option. Rogue’s PvE strength is designed around our single target prowess and I firmly believe that’s how it should be. Overall damage done isn’t always the most important PvE statistic for our class, it’s usually damage done to >< target because other classes can have more viable aoe and weaker single target sustained damage.

Now all that being said, when we take a look at FoK we can see just how weak this is for our final WOTLK ability. Post 3.2.2 it’s going to be weak for both PvE and PvP, and it’s only use is to catch people who are 5-8 yards away that we can’t snare or to aoe out rogues and mages. It’s not terrible but it’s a fairly weak and lame ability. Not expecting a fix and I’m not saying it breaks our class to not have a great final WOTLK ability, but I think FoK is extremely weak and could use a closer look from Blizz in the future.

Some other good news for 3.2.2

Death Knight
Pets

• Gnaw: This death knight (more…)