Other major changes in 3.2

Spare some...change?

There’s a lot going on in 3.2 beyond the titanium/epic gem addition. No, they won't turn us into homeless zombies (though the addictiveness of the game might), but there are tons of class and profession changes. I think the vast majority of class changes will not be ground breaking or game altering. Retribution Paladins are getting a pretty big overhaul with how they do damage but in the end, they will work pretty much the same as they had before, they’re just using a different seal and will be hitting Crusader Strike more often. They’ll also still NOT be able to kill a healer by themselves since their damage won’t be as “bursty” as it is now. Hunters are getting a few minor buffs but in general, they’ll still be stink on toast in 2v2 Arena due to them having issues getting melee DPS off their back. I’m not familiar enough with the other classes to really say if they will see huge changes, but from what I’ve read I’ll go out on a limb and say no, they won’t.

These are the big changes:

New change: Emblems of Conquest from every form of dungeon/raid. New emblem from the new 25 man Argent Tournament instances.

Effect: Since most Emblem of Conquest gear is ilvl 226, it’ll be harder than ever to gear check a potential PuG, so be sure you have some decent raid achievements to prove you aren’t a slacktard. It should also mean masses of new gear to gem and enchant, so there should be a steady demand for gems and scrolls of enchants on the AH. I’m not predicting massive inflation, just steady prices for a few months.

New change: Wintergrasp is now something of an open world instance where there can only be 100 players per side in combat.

Effect: Much less lag in Wintergrasp and the potential for massively lopsided matches. I know that players are randomly selected from the queue but it will be interesting to see if the system can be exploited. All in all a good change and with the weekly quests for Wintergrasp, it should really help to spread out the numbers over the week instead of the entire server being in Wintergrasp every Tuesday evening.

New change: The addition of Normal and Heroic raids.

Effect: Raiders who want to attempt bosses on Hard Mode will now be able to run the regular raid and not worry about getting saved to their hard mode group.

New change: The Argent Crusader’s Coliseum

Effect: New 5, 10 and 25 man instances much like the Ring of Blood except now an instanced dungeon/raid. Sounds like a cool concept and a good change to the standard “clear trash, boss fight, clear trash, boss fight” dungeons. I’m very curious to see what the rewards are.

New change: Resilience will mitigate both crit and non-crit damage.

Effect: Longer matches and not as many insta-gibs. Talent specs with no Mortal Strike type debuff and limited crowd control/interrupts will probably disappear from 2v2 matches *cough* ret *cough*. Warrior and rogue teams will dominate even more in 2v2 but Blizzard won’t care because…

New change: Season 7 Arena gear required a 3v3 or 5v5 rating.

Effect: 2v2? No soup for you! This is why Blizzard won’t care about 2v2, because they won’t be able to get Season 7 gear unless they play on a 3v3 or 5v5 team. For 3’s, heavy CC teams with Mortal Strike effects will dominate more than usual. Expect to see Rogue-Mage-Priest teams dominating…again.

There’s another change that I’ll be writing about more after I do the proper research and that is the change in materials to Engineer crafted ammo. Stay tuned.