Class Previews Day 1

I know, I know. We paladins have to wait another week before we get to see what Blizzard has in store for us. But there are other classes to take a look at before then.

Since I play quite a bit with my shaman and death knight as well, I'm eager to see what kind of changes those classes will get.

Ghostcrawler dropped a DK bomb already the other day by declaring that Blood will be the designated tanking tree for death knights. This was a change that I've been expecting for some time. Blizzard probably realized that designing meaningful Masteries for all three DK trees, when having all three being able to both dps and tank, would have been a game design nightmare.

So they took the easy way out, and we will now see Blood as a tanking tree, Frost as a Dual-Wield dps tree, and Unholy as a Two-hander dps tree.

Anyway, we will see more of the DK changes tomorrow. Today the classes previewed were Shaman, Warlock, and Priest.

I don't play a warlock nor a priest, so I don't really understand the impact of the changes presented. I guess locks are happy to finally get rid of those shards.

This, however, is really cool:

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or "Life Grip") is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can't seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

The shammy changes presented made me happy. I rarely play as enhancement, and I kind of feel like enhance shammies got the least exciting changes of the three specs. The other two specs got the following candy:

Elemental:

• Elemental shammies get a more useful AoE damage spell in Earthquake, which sounds fun.
• Spirit on gear turns into hit for elemental shammies, which means restos and "ellies" will finally be able to share gear.
• Totem of Wrath will no longer be a static buff, but a 4-10% (depending on spec) spell power buff.
  
• Spiritwalker's Grace (see below) will make it possible to dps while moving.
• Elemental Overload Mastery seems cool. Moar pew-pew!
  

Good stuff! A useful AoE, "hit for free", scaling spell power buff, and no more "lightning bolt turrets".

Restoration:
Before I start, check these two new talents out:

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.

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.

OMGawesumsweetnessyummy!

Healing Rain sounds so sexy I want it right this instant! Imagine a healing spell I will cast outside of my little Grid world! I will actually have to move my eyes from Grid and target something in the actual game to heal. People can run in and take a healing shower and move out when topped off.

Spiritwalker's Grace is like getting pie after eating some cake with a plate of cookies as the side dish. The hardest fights to heal as a shammy is the fights will lots of movement. I mean, you only get so far with Riptide, and Nature's Swiftness do have a two-minute cooldown. This new talent will make it possible to heal on the move when it matters the most.

Other:

• A new go-to heal in New Healing Wave.
• Bye-bye Cleansing Totem (/cry).
• Spirit Link is back. Well, maybe.
• A very nice Mastery: Deep Healing.

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.

• And a shammy version of the paladin judgement: Unleash Weapon.

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.

I look forward to healing on my shammy in Cataclysm!

Now, bring on the death knight changes! Then we will have a full week to recover before the paladin preview is upon us!