Beta Blog 2: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

New talents & trees
As with BC and other major patches, most classes have had a considerable revamp for the level grind to 80. The introduction of Death Knights also means class balance needs to be sorted out again and class roles are being reconsidered.

On the plus side, my boomkin loves the new Balance tree – although druids do still suffer from bloated trees (for all specs I think) the mere fact that ‘roots’ are now usable indoors makes them far more viable as an instance/raid member.

But those bloat issues are still a bit of a problem; for moonkin to be really effective as a caster they need to dump a lot of points into balance, which wouldn’t be so much of a problem if there weren’t good talents such as Omen of Clarity over in restoration. It would be nice to be able to run a 40/21 split (or whatever the equivalent Wrath split will be) like other classes. Feral and Resto have similar issues but I guess we’ll see more down the track.

Kings of AoE? What?
And this brings me to mages (and the requisite mage QQ); talents seem to be all over the place in the beta. Single target DPS seems to have had a nerf and the Fire tree (nominally the raid spec since BC) has had more AoE talents and spells added to it.

Mage has been my preferred class since the original release. I’m lukewarm about new talents such as Hot Streak (after three consecutive crits, you have a chance to get 100 per cent crit bonus) and World in Flames (increase to your AoE damage). And Living Bomb simply doesn’t do it for me; if Blizz really wants mages to be the ‘kings of AoE’ as they’ve suggested they really need more stamina and a chance to AoE from distance. Otherwise you may as well roll for our kidney.

Druids still have a lot of hard decisions in their late game builds.

Inscription
Just like Jewelcrafting in BC, the new profession, Inscription, will be added to the game with Wrath. Inscription will allow players to create scrolls and other items for single use or to act as enchantments or item enhancements on gear. As with most professions inscription has a complementary profession; in this case it's herbalism. Scribes harvest herbs and use them to create magical inks which they then scribble away with on parchments.

Inscription also uses the skill ‘Milling’ to draw trade items out of bunches of herbs – pretty much like ‘prospecting’ in Jewelcrafting. You need a stack of five of the same herbs, e.g. a stack of five peacebloom, to mill out some Alabaster Pomace in order to create Moonglow ink. So, if you'd like to make a bundle of gold come expansion time, get your herbalist stock-piling low-level herbs as lazy peons power level through the profession.

Apprentice level grants the ability to create Scrolls of Spirit, Stamina etc., as well as interesting items like Scroll of Recall – now everyone can zip around like mages. Well, maybe not mages - let's go with shammies. At the very least it will make those damned Children's Week escort quests easier to complete.

Proof that WoW devs still have a wicked sense of humour.