After five years, Blizzard is overhauling the World of Warcraft almost completely, with the physical changes to Azeroth -- from the rending of the Barrens to the submersion of Thousand Needles -- merely being one part of a major shake-up to the game. Everything is being revisited, including class mechanics, which means class dynamics are going to change a whole lot. That means PvP, the game's version of rock-paper-scissors, is going to be very different.

Some classes will play differently, such as hunters and warlocks, who get new resource mechanics in focus and soul shards. Others will get tweaks to their resources, such as death knights, whose rune system is receiving a few changes. Character stats will be streamlined, there will be new itemization, and even entirely new game mechanics such as mastery and the Path of the Titans. The recent spate of class previews have given us a insight to the various masteries, but there's still much to learn about the various Paths. This early into the development of Cataclysm, we should expect that many of the announced plans are bound to change. That said, all of the information we have so far gives us a pretty good idea of where Blizzard is headed with the game. After the break, let's take stock of all the announcements so far and see how it affects PvP.

Changes to health and healing

One of the aims of the development team for Cataclysm was to parcel out more health to all classes, which should narrow the traditional gap of health between, say, those wearing plate and those sporting cloth. The increased health and shift away from tremendous burst damage -- a direction Blizzard started taking through the course of Wrath of the Lich King -- poses the threat of healing becoming overly dominant in the PvP environment. The good news is that Blizzard is well aware of this and they plan to curb that dominance by making healing mana intensive or at least require more careful management of the mana resource. In theory, this means fights will last a little longer and players will get to exercise more of their abilities.

Blizzard is homogenizing healing in a big way by giving most healing classes some sort of small, medium and large heals (druids retain their already considerable set of heals). This is a huge change that should impact PvP because short, efficient heals are important in a fast-paced environment where targeted, focused players can go down in health very, very quickly. Blizzard's philosophy is that there should be a trade-off for fast heals, so they're making them deliberately more expensive and inefficient. Healers will have access to slow, bang-for-the-buck heals that heal for huge amounts but take some time to cast -- time that, in PvP, players might not have.

It's an interesting scenario. One of Blizzard's aims is to prevent mana from being an ignored resource. Players in better gear or optimal raid set-ups these days can recover mana at a rate that allows them to no longer worry about it. If the developers manage to make mana management a challenging play experience, abilities that attack the resource directly such as Drain Mana, Mana Burn and Viper Sting become even more valuable against healers. The goal isn't merely to penalize healing but rather to put the three aspects of PvP gameplay -- healing, damage and crowd control -- on equal footing. That's easier said than done, but Blizzard has a wealth of experience from eight seasons of Arenas and five years' worth of tweaking the Battlegrounds ... hopefully they'll manage to strike that balance in Cataclysm. Or as close to balanced as rock-paper-scissors can possibly be.

New mechanics, new playing styles

The changes to class mechanics, particularly for warlocks, is a wild shift in perspective. Warlocks, typically known for a slow burn approach, suddenly becomes a cooldown class that plays with soul shards to achieve dramatic effects. The three soul shard limit per combat (Blizzard has mentioned the possibility of generating soul shards) makes warlocks an extremely strategic and fun class to play. Some will go all in and use their soul shards for maximum burn, perhaps with a succession of instant cast Soul Fires, which can result in spectacular victories or crashing defeats. Others will play conservatively and use soul shards as an emergency resource, such as gaining a speed burst after casting Demonic Circle: Teleport to flee from an opponent. Playing as and against a warlock has never promised to be so much fun.

One question that hasn't been answered is if soul shards will become an enemy-visible resource. Since warlocks will retain mana, it will be interesting to see if soul shards can also be tracked by opponents or hidden similar to death knight runes. In a perfect world, both soul shards and runes will be viewable by opposing players, making combat more strategic and less of a guessing game.

Last week, I discussed how the new dispel mechanics affect PvP. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Cataclysm is almost like a whole new game, with the new mechanics, stats and class changes paving the way for an entirely different playing experience. If you thought Wrath changed our view of certain classes, Cataclysm will demolish them. Hunters will shift to a focus mechanic, which Blizzard likens to rogue energy, but which should already be familiar to any hunter as the resource their companions use. It's a great change, if slightly less radical than the warlock soul shard change. The interesting side note: focus regeneration is affected by haste, making it a truly valuable stat for hunters.

Hunters will also be able to change pets on the fly, allowing them to pick a pet based on their opponents in the Battlegrounds. More casters? Bring out an anti-caster pet. Assigned to focus on the flag carrier? Get an ensnaring pet. Hunters will probably only get one opportunity to swap their pet in an Arena match (before the fight begins), but will have numerous opportunities in the Battlegrounds. A Web-tossing spider would be awesome in open ground pursuit in Alterac Valley but less useful than, say, a tallstrider kicking up Dust Clouds while fighting in the constrained space of a tower or bunker.

The developers figure that each spec has a particular role and playstyle, going so far as to create a dedicated tanking tree for death knights. This means each class spec will be more defined and feel distinctive apart from the other two specs. In the paladin class preview, the developers revealed that they intend to take away retribution's defensive capabilities in exchange for a more offensive skill set. It's a great move and a turnaround from their direction in Wrath, where they took away retribution burst and piled on its durability. Instead, retribution paladins will return to being offensive juggernauts with a bit of squishiness thrown in. By the same token, a lot of death knight survivability talents will be moved to the blood tree, which means unholy will lose access to Bone Shield. Small changes like these throughout all the classes indicate that DPS specs will lose some basic survivability but should expectedly gain more offensive oomph.

What does this imply? On the surface, it means a lot more variety on the battlefield. While Arena compositions will probably be whittled down to a few complementary or min/max classes and specs, the Battlegrounds will be supremely colorful, flexible, and downright crazy fun. With a renewed emphasis on Battleground play -- with several of the class change previews mentioning the Battlegrounds as an active consideration in development -- it seems clear that Blizzard is encouraging diversity in large-scale PvP encounters. Exciting times. Let's take a closer look at each class change in the next part.


It would be foolish at this point to put too much stock in the specific class changes and new abilities, knowing that Cataclysm has yet to enter the beta stage. Many of the abilities we've read will change in some form or even be scrapped entirely before the game ships, so we can't get too excited nor too upset with them. What they do give us, however, is an inkling into the developers' thought process and the direction they intend to take with the class. This, in turn, should help us envision how PvP will be like in the (hopefully) near future.

Death Knight

As Daniel mentioned in his analysis, most of the previewed abilities seem geared towards PvP. It's boring news for raiders, but awesome news for PvP-heads. Blizzard plans to introduce a new anti-healing mechanic with Necrotic Strike, something they backtracked on early in Wrath but seem to be giving it another shot. Working like a corrupted Power Word: Shield that eats up incoming heals on the death knight's opponent, Necrotic Strike is one more ability that defines Blizzard's vision for Cataclysm PvP: healing will be harder.

They also plan to give death knights another anti-caster ability called Dark Simulacrum, which replicates their opponent's next spell. Think of it as a preemptive Spellsteal or Spell Reflect. If it wasn't clear enough in Wrath, Cataclysm should firmly establish death knights as the anti-caster class. The anticipated loss of defensive abilities from frost and unholy should make those specs a little more vulnerable to physical or melee classes. Death knights had previously enjoyed a unique position of being able to handle most classes with relative ease owing to a combination of magical and physical damage, as well as excellent mitigation. If Blizzard stays its course through Cataclysm, mitigation abilities will be the domain of tanking specs.

If anything is indicative of what will define playing style in Cataclysm, it's the masteries. In the case of death knights, blood will be extremely resilient with the Healing Absorption mastery coupled with blood's self-heals; frost promises to have high burst potential with rapid Runic Power Generation; and unholy will be piling on Disease Damage, in a DoT-oriented playstyle. We'll learn more as Cataclysm unravels, but death knights should brace themselves for a dip in their defensive capabilities.

Druid

The funny thing about the druid changes is that the removal of a persistent tree form might have generated the loudest uproar among the druid community. However, the one thing that jumps out among the new abilities is Stampeding Roar, which Allison mentions is more oriented towards PvP. Sure, it will probably help some players get out of the freaking fire faster, but you know where this ability will shine? In the Battlegrounds. It's almost certain that the developers envision entire teams stampeding their way out of the starting gates in a rush to get to Battleground objectives. If druids are awesome flag carriers in Warsong Gulch now, wait until they break out Stampeding Roar and get their friends to, well, stampede all over their opponents on the way to their own base.

Balance druids will also get a playstyle change coming from mastery rather than an actual change in class mechanics. The Eclipse mastery necessitates that balance druids alternate their nature and arcane magic spells to maintain perfect balance, which makes their spell rotations somewhat predictable. On the flip side, balance druids must continuously strike a balance -- pun unintended -- between keeping an alternating rotation or choosing the most appropriate spell for the situation. Additionally, Blizzard intends to give balance druids a fun little toy in Wild Mushrooms. If planting invisible, exploding mushrooms all over a Battleground isn't trippy fun, I don't know what is.

Cat feral druids, in turn, will be even more rogue-like than ever, with the promise of a reliable interrupt. According to Blizzard, a cat druid should be a real alternative to rogues in Arena compositions, which can only mean good things. It also means that casters should be even more wary.

Hunter

As mentioned, hunters are getting a resource overhaul, which should make gameplay slightly different. The change seems cosmetic for now, but at the very least, this makes hunters immune to mana attacks. Brian felt underwhelmed by the new abilities, but mostly because he was looking at it from a PvE perspective. By any reckoning, firing traps from long range is awesome in PvP and it will become far more difficult to avoid them. Hunter crowd control should improve immensely -- the usability of a Frost Trap increases tenfold when a hunter doesn't even have to be in the midst of the fracas to use it.

Camouflage should also provide some interesting possibilities. Its largely a PvP spell, and should allow a hunter to fire off an opener from long range without getting countered. Nothing about the masteries indicate a shift in playstyles, however, as beast masters remain pet-centric, marksmen continue to be weapon dependent, and survivalists get an extra boost from utility abilities such as traps. Nothing new there. What should be interesting, however, will be the changes to pet abilities. Will hyenas lose Tendon Rip in exchange for their new bleed capability? Pets providing passive buffs to parties is phenomenally boring for PvP. It would be great if Blizzard offered one passive PvE buff and a utilitarian PvP ability for each pet ... considering that PvP seems to be a clear focus in these previewed developments, that might not be out of the question.

Mage

As if mages don't already find great demand in Arena compositions (or at least are a staple in one of the most enduring ones), they also get Time Warp, an arcane version of Bloodlust/Heroism. With large scale or Battlegrounds PvP being a main focus in Cataclysm, a mage becomes even more essential to the group. Imagine casting Time Warp while battling against the boss in Alterac Valley or the Isle of Conquest. In a race to the finish, abilities like this will make a difference. The movement boost is just icing on the cake. Just ask Christian, who's excited about this ability the most.

If a renamed Bloodlust/Heroism doesn't get you excited, then how about Wall of Fog? Blizzard specifically mentioned its utility in the Battlegrounds, and the possibilities are just fun as heck. Mages can throw Wall of Fog to stop the pursuit of a flag carrier in Warsong Gulch, slow down ascent up the Strand of the Ancients, or make the Dun Baldar bridge even more impassable. Placed in strategic locations, a Wall of Fog helps teams achieve Battleground goals.

As far as playing style is concerned, it gets a little interesting. The arcane mastery of Mana Adept makes it such that an arcane mage becomes vulnerable on two fronts as attacking their mana pool ultimately neuters, or at least weakens, their attacks. Hopefully we'll see the return of potions and other PvP consumables in the Battlegrounds in Cataclysm. If you think fire mages are suicidal now, wait until they get the a Life Tap-like talent which not only encourages them to go down fighting in a glorious ball of flames, it forces them to do it while cheering them on with fiery pom-poms. Oh, and the Ignite mastery basically makes fire mages like warlocks. Finally, there's the unexciting Deathfrost mastery which, at the heart of it, only means that mages should cast something besides Frostbolt.

Paladin

The paladin class preview thankfully came out sooner than expected, although it was somewhat underwhelming. A paladin version of the death knight Gargoyle just seems a little boring, regardless of the three different effects of Guardian of the Ancient Kings. If anything, it should provide an awesome graphic. There's also the Healing Hands ability, which turns the paladin into a walking Healing Stream Totem. Aside from the fact that it seems rather dull -- who ever got excited over a Healing Stream Totem? -- it is counter-intuitive to use, because paladin healers don't exactly mix it up with the tanks and DPS. In PvP, a paladin healer isn't going to be in the middle of the Royal Rumble; he's going to be outside the ring, smacking folks who get too close to the rope. This means Healing Hands is going to heal ... nobody important. Chase is excited about having an AoE heal, though. Because it emanates from the paladin, it seems far more useful to protection and retribution in the midst of combat.

Paladins also get Blinding Shield which should be awesome in PvP. Because it necessitates a shield -- meaning Blizzard is deliberately keeping it away from retribution's greedy hands -- this will see a lot of use by holy and protection paladins who need a quick peel. Expect retribution paladins to pack a shield just for this spell. Protection will get a talent to make it instant cast, too, so a bit of crowd control seems to have been added to the prot tool box. The really interesting part of the preview lay in the changes to baseline abilities, as all paladins will finally get Holy Shock and Crusader Strike in a long overdue response to the paladin community's requests and criticisms on the class' playstyle.

Ironically, the holy tree mastery is called Critical Healing Effect, which seems to encourage (once again, with feeling) stacking crit. Blizzard already went down this path before and ended up nerfing the holy tree, so it remains to be seen how they'll manage to keep this mastery from breaking the spec again. Protection paladins can block for more with Block Amount, and it's so unexciting that even the ability name makes you sleepy. Finally, retribution paladins might be getting a bit of a boost with Holy Damage, which might indicate that Blizzard intends to give retribution a few more toys that play with holy damage. Those are probably just the working names for the masteries, though.

Priest

Three words: Leap. of. Faith. We can actually end the priest discussion here because the promised new ability seems about the most exciting PvP defensive ability to come out from Irvine in a while. Sure, it's just a reverse Death Grip, but that's exactly the point. It's one of the most awesome ally-peeling abilities ever and will be used and abused in Arenas to save friends who have over-extended, been Death Gripped, are being trained or focused on ... the list goes on. Dawn seemed unimpressed by the ability, but it's because she was looking at it from a raider's perspective. It's quite likely that PvP priests all over the world broke out into a Glee-like synchronized chorus of a medley of Journey songs when this was announced. Every serious PvP player knows that PvP is positional and, boy, is Leap of Faith as positional as it gets.

There's also the movement-increasing Inner Will, and everyone knows that moving faster is always better in PvP. A few announcements, such as the intent to make Shadow Word: Death more useful as an execute spell should provide an interesting twist. Overall, priests look as though they're getting a huge buff PvP-wise, with spells such as Power Word: Barrier working well in both PvP and PvE situations and since Battlegrounds are such a big part of Cataclysm, a fully-shielded group is nothing to scoff at. The various masteries only reinforce the current roles of priests now, although it will take more than HoT components in Radiance to give holy priests more viability in Arenas. Shadow priests will need more survivability, as well, considering Wrath of the Lich King let down the spec with Dispersion.

The good news is that in Cataclysm, battlegrounds will move into the foreground and arenas will take a developmental back seat. This means that we'll be seeing a lot more diversity in class and spec representation, which means that jumping into the fray as a holy priest won't invite ridicule in the new PvP environment. In fact, the large scale PvP environment might be the best place for holy priests to shine.

Rogue

Bad news. Rogues aren't single-target killers anymore. The new Redirect ability will allow rogues to swap targets without losing momentum and can even be used strategically by accumulating combo points on a decoy and then calling a switch to unleash a five combo point finishing move on a new target without any set-up. The PvP implications are staggering. Rogues can very well finish off an opponent using auto-attacks and retain combo points to use on a subsequent target, possibly unleashing, say, a full duration Kidney Shot right from the get go. That's downright nasty. The good news for prospective rogue victims? Cheap Shot and Kidney Shot will share the same diminishing returns.

Now let's talk about Smoke Bomb, an ability that creates line-of-sight complications. Capping the flag in Arathi Basin? Boom. Smoke Bomb. Opponents will no longer be able to stop flag captures with ranged attacks, and enemies will need to enter the cloud of smoke at their own risk. Attacking the enemy general? Boom. Smoke Bomb. This will prevent opponents from targeting the tank or surrounding DPS, enabling teams to cut down the boss with minimal interference. Forget Battleground objectives -- throw a Smoke Bomb, get everyone inside and start pewpewing in an untargetable cloud of delicious ninja smoke. It's so delicious Chase is still smacking his lips just thinking about it. Everyone will want a rogue in their battleground premade.

As if rogues weren't slippery enough, Blizzard is also throwing them another defensive cooldown called Combat Readiness, which addresses their biggest chink in their leather armor -- protection against fellow melee. Not only that, rogues actually get a heal ability called Recuperate. If you thought rogues were hard to kill now, wait until they get new toys in Cataclysm. As for masteries, it looks as though assassination and subtlety will remain the PvP specs because of poisons and stronger finishers while combat will generate consistent DPS which will possibly continue to confine it as a raiding spec.

Shaman

Out of all the toys that shamans will be getting in the expansion, one ability jumps out as particularly useful for PvP: Spiritwalker's Grace. Imagine elemental and restoration shaman retaining their mobility while casting spells with a casting time. This will improve their desirability in small PvP environments such as arenas, but at the same time provide much needed mobility to a class that is sorely lacking in that department. On the other hand, shamans got hit hard by the changes to dispel mechanics because of the loss of their fire-and-forget Cleansing Totem and their loss of poison and disease dispels. The tradeoff, of course, is that the restoration tree gets a talent to remove magic. You win some, you lose some.

And then you win some more. Spirit Link, an ability that didn't make it through Wrath's beta phase, is attempting to make a comeback. We'll also see elemental shamans get the old Warcraft 3 ability Earthquake, a targeted, persistent AoE spell, which interestingly enough bypasses a rogue's smoke bomb. They will also get Unleash Weapon, which sadly sounds like the shaman version of paladin judgements, but at least gives shamans of all specs some instant-cast, offensive utility aside from shocks. Overall, nothing truly remarkable for shamans in PvP, not even the respective masteries of the different specs.

Warlock

As mentioned, warlocks are going to be very exciting in the new environment, thanks to the soul shard mechanic overhaul. One interesting ability that would need more clarification to generate excitement and proper analysis would be Demon Soul, which fuses the warlock with her chosen demon to gain specific effects. It would be cool to find out what kind of effects will be available and which will be geared towards PvP or PvE utility. It's pretty clear Blizzard has PvP in its sights because of a few changes done to the class. For example, the new Whiplash ability of the succubus knocks back opponents, which should extend its PvP survivability somewhat.

Furthermore, warlocks in Metamorphosis or demon form will be immune to demonic fear such as Turn Evil, which means that the paladin's Glyph of Turn Evil will probably lose its PvP appeal in the coming environment. A demonology warlock's abilities while Metamorphosed will be altered to reflect her own abilities, which is a welcome change considering that the abilities of a Metamorphosed demon were jarringly different from that of a caster class. Shadow Cleave? Demon Charge? Challenging Howl? It was as though Blizzard suddenly wanted warlocks to melee tank. It didn't make sense at all and something we'd pointed out, oh, since the beginning of Wrath. Warlocks should look forward announcement of the new abilities while Metamorphosed, as there's a good chance of gaining some PvP utility or survivability there.

Warlocks also get some sort of killing blow ability with the Shadowburn talent, which deals more damage to opponents below 25% health, although it probably won't replenish a soul shard in the same manner. The masteries also further define the distinctive playstyles of all three specs: affliction will be all about shadow magic DoTs, demonology will be all about pets and destruction will be all about direct damage fire spells. Blizzard did a great job making each spec distinct in Wrath, and they're following through even better in Cataclysm.

Warrior

Provided Blizzard can fix pathing issues, targeting and possible exploits throughout the beta, Heroic Leap will be making a comeback in Cataclysm. Purely because of its positional nature, we're putting this one as a PvP ability. Thunder Clap and stun effect in one jumping ability? Yes, please. There's also a small change to Whirlwind which puts a damper on it being used against single targets (hint: it wasn't meant to), but the change to it being usable on an unlimited number of targets is the funky part. Think defending a bunker. Think the chaos of taking down the enemy general. The more enemies clumped together in one place, the better. Considering that Cataclysm PvP is shifting towards large scale environments, this might be even more fun than its original, hard-hitting version.

One important note tucked away in the warrior class changes is Blizzard's statement about healing in Cataclysm. As mentioned, there'll be more health and less healing. To keep up with these changes, the environment-defining Mortal Strike is being nerfed rebalanced to apply a 20% healing penalty, down from its original 50%. It's a huge change. Huge. Gargantuan, even. Matthew Rossi certainly doesn't like it. Blizzard basically doesn't want Mortal Strike or similar effects to be mandatory in a PvP environment. This will likely impact smaller scale PvP such as Arenas in a big way, but won't be as palpable in Battleground play where objectives and not attrition are the main goal.

Furthermore, Blizzard is considering changing all Mortal Strike effects to apply a physical -- or undispellable -- debuff called Mortal Wounds. This puts all these effects on even footing, as opposed to, say, Wound Poison or Permafrost being dispellable. The lowered value also standardizes the effect across all classes. These aren't specifically warrior changes, but since Blizzard tucked it in the discussion, we might as well mention it here.

Warriors also get a few other things that we're likely to see in PvP encounters, such as the new arms talent Disarming Nature. The fear effect is such an amazing crowd control ability that warriors will have reason to use Disarm even against casters. Will damage break the effect? We don't know for sure, but it's an awesome talent, anyway.

Other changes of note

Another thing that can be observed in the spate of class changes is the Frostfire Bolt effect, or giving spells two dimensions of damage. It appears as though Blizzard is making magic schools matter more when it comes to damage, and gave certain classes spells that work off two or more magical schools. Warlocks get Fel Flame, which deals shadow and fire damage, while survival hunters have a mastery that allows some abilities to deal elemental damage. Balance druids are encouraged to mix it up and deal arcane as well as nature damage. Frost mages have a mastery that encourages the use of spells outside Frostbolt. There are other talents and masteries that push the different magical schools to the fore, such as increased nature damage for enhancement shamans and increased holy damage for retribution paladins.

Does it mean anything? We can't tell for sure. It could be that Blizzard is merely delineating spell sources and preparing players for elemental bosses who normally have high resistances against particular magical schools. It could also mean that Blizzard is placing increased importance on the type of magic used for a spell (or even physical damage -- as the Cobra Shot as a Steady Shot alternative shows). This might impact PvP in some way, which should make things incredibly interesting. Of course, the removal of school specific resistance spells such as Fire Ward and Frost Ward seem to indicate otherwise, but it's certainly food for thought.

Suffice it to say, PvP will change dramatically come Cataclysm. The outlined changes don't even begin to cover everything we'll be seeing in the coming months, as Blizzard has explicitly stated that it will be removing all passive, unexciting talents and replacing them with abilities that have concrete, discernible effects. That means talent trees will play a bigger role than ever. All that and we haven't even delved into the Path of the Titans yet. You'd better brace yourselves, because we're in for one hell of a ride.