Token system revealed

Last week, Tigole hinted that Heroic Badges and BG Tokens would get storage space. If you are on beta and type "/console showtokenframe 1" followed by "/token", this tokens window will show and it's probably the new storage system Tigole talked about that will track all your tokens, honor and arena points.

 

Next Beta Build - Class Changes

The official Wrath of the Lich King talent calculators have been updated on Thursday and Saturday, and we compared WoWhead talent calculators (current beta build) with official talent calculators (we assume these new class changes are from the next beta build) to find out the new class changes from Saturday's update.

 Death Knight
Blood

• Vendetta now heals you up to 2/4% (old version: 3/6%) of your total maximum health.
• Blood Gorged (Tier 10) is now only affecting melee damage.
• Mark of Blood no longer has a cooldown. (that's probably a typo on the official talent calc)

Frost

• New Tier 8 Talent - Blood of the North - Whenever you used a Blood Strike, there is a 20% chance that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates.
• Improved Icy Touch now does an additional 10/20/30/40/50% damage or 20/40/60/80/100% damage to Frozen Targets.
• Frost Strike no longer requires Merciless Combat to be trained.
• Frost Aura now increases your Frost Resistance by 32/64 (old 26/49).
• Nerves of Cold Steel moved from Tier 3 to Tier 2.
• Annihilation moved from Tier 6 to Tier 3.
• Merciless Combat moved from Tier 8 to Tier 6.
• Aneurysm moved from Tier 8 to Tier 7.

Unholy

• Corpse Explosion damage increased from 60 to 216 damage (modified by attack power).
• Improved Corpse Explosion length component increased from 9 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Unholy Aura now increases your Shadow Resistance by 32/64 (old 26/49).

  Druid
Balance

• Typhoon Mana cost increased from 475 mana to 645 mana, and damage increased from 400 to 530.
• Force of Nature cooldown reduced from 3 to 2 minutes.

Feral

• Primal Tenacity now reduces the duration of Fear effects by 10/20/30% (old version: 5/10/15%) , and reduces all damage taken while Stunned by 10/20/30% (old version: 5/10/15%).

  Hunter
Marksmanship

• Aimed Shot casting time increased from 2.5 to 3 secs.

Survival

• Wyvern Sting minimum range increased to 8 yards from 5 yards.
• Hunting Party - Your critical shots have a 20/30/40/50/60% (old version: 20/40/60/80/100%) chance to restore 2% mana, 10 energy, 4 rage or 10 Runic Power to all members of your party. This effect has an 8 sec. cooldown.

  Mage
Arcane

• Arcane Impact (tier 3) changed to Spell Impact proccing off many more spells. Tooltip: Increases the critical strike chance of your Arcane Explosion, ArcaneBlast, Blast Wave, Fire Blast, Ice Lance, Cone of Cold spells by an additional 2/4/6%.
• Arcane Potency (tier 6) no longer requires 5 points in Arcane Concentration (tier 2), but 1 point in Presence of Mind.
• Student of Mind (tier 9) moved to Tier 3.
• Potent Spirit (tier 8) replaced with Mind Mastery. New tooltip: Increases spell damage by up to 5/10/15/20/25% of your total intellect.
• Netherwind Presence (tier 10) moved to Tier 9 to replace Student of Mind. The talent has also been reworked to give 6% passive haste. New tooltip: Increases your spell haste by 2/4/6%.
• Missile Barrage (tier 10) new talent to replace Netherwind Presence's instant casts with faster Arcane Missiles. Tooltip: Gives your Arcane Barrage, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt spells a 3/6/9/12/15% chance to reduce the channeled duration of the next Arcane Missiles spell to 1.5 secs and fire missiles every .3 sec.

Fire

• Living Bomb mana cost lowered from 400 to 388 mana, and damage increased from 51 to 56-57 (explosion dmg increased from 212 to 233-234).

Frost

• Arctic Reach is no longer affecting Ice Lance.

  Paladin
Holy

• Holy Shock mana costs has been decreased by 30% through all ranks.

Protection

• Holy Shield damage increased by 10%, charges increased to 6.
• Guarded by Light proc removed. New tooltip: Reduced the mana cost of your Consectration, Holy Wrath and Avenger's Shield spells by 15%.

Retribution

• Improved Blessing of Might increases the attack power bonus of Blessing of Might by 10/20/30/40/50%.
• Vindication reduced to 2 talent points, debuff increased to 20%.
• Pursuit of Justice reduced to 2 talent points, at 2/2 the effect is unchanged.

  Priest
Discipline

• Penance range is increased to 40 yard for friendly targets.

  Shaman
Elemental

• Convection reduced to 3 talent points. At 3/3 the effect is unchanged.
• Elemental Fury has been unlinked from Elemental Focus.
• Thunderstorm damage ranged moved from 595-679 to 610-694.

Enhancement

• Improved Shields now increases mana gained from your Mana Shield orbs by 10% instead of 5% from Water Shield. The other effects are unchanged.
• Feral Spirit - the wolves last 45 seconds instead of 30.

Restoration

• Earth Shield mana cost has been doubled. Rank 3 at level 70 now costs 900 mana instead of 450.

  Warlock
Affliction

• Fel Concentration now also gives 14/28/42/56/70% chance to avoid interruption while casting Unstable Affliction and Haunt.
• Improved Felhunter: Your felhunter gains mana equal to 50/100% of the damage done by its Shadow Bite ability, and increases the effect of your Felhunter's Fel Intellgence by 2%. (Old tooltip: Your Felhunter gains mana equal to 33% of the damage done by its Shadow Bite ability, and reduced the cooldown of your Felhunter's Expel magic by 10 sec.
• Eradication now gives Corruption ticks 5/10/15% chance to increase spell casting speed by 20% for 12% instead of 4/7/10% chance.
• Haunt now - casting time increased to 2 secs from 1.5 secs.

Demonology

• Demonic Embrace now increases total Stamina by 2/4/6/8/10% down from 3/6/9/12/15%.
• Unholy Power unlinked from Soul Link.
• Demonic Sacrifice's 20% spell haste and 10% spell damage buff changed to 10% fire damage for Imp, restoring 2% of total health every 4 sec for Voidwalker, 10% shadow damage for Succubus, restoring 3% total mana every 4 sec for Felhunter and 10% shadow and fire damage, restoring 2% of total mana every 4 sec for the Felguard.
• Demonic Empowerment now doesn't heal the Succubus to 100% when vanishing, only increases the Imp's spell critical chance by 20%, instead of resetting the Felhunter's cooldowns now dispels all magical effects from the Felhunter.

Destruction

• Aftermath now only gives Destruction spells a 2/4% chance to daze down from 5/10%.
• Conflagrate Rank 1-5 damage increased by 10.
• Shadowfury Rank 1-2 damage increased by 15.
• Eternal Flames tooltip clarified.
• Chaos Bolt cooldown reduced from 12 to 8 seconds, damage increased by 22.

  Warrior
Arms

• Bloodletting renamed to Improved Rend.

Protection

• Shield Specialization now generates 1 rage (old: 2 rage) when a block occurs.

WotLK - Blue Posts

Will the guards become level 75?(src)
We plan on doing a "guard pass" soon. We're also reviewing our general guard template of abilities.

Gold display in achievements (src)
We definitely want to clean up the currency display. It's on our list.

Death Knight - Talent Changes (src)
We kept reading about how players didn't use say Death Strike or Rune Tap because Vendetta was too good. This is the kind of thing we'll continue to tweak.  Chains of Ice and Hungering Cold are the only reliable freezes a DK has. We'd rather base combos around that than spamming Icy Touch or Mind Freeze in hopes of a random one.
We are still concerned that Frost has too many abilities that are part of your rotation instead of situational. The new talent is intended to help with this by providing more frost runes. It may also mean that Howling Blast needs to be more situational. Give it a spin when the data are updated and let us know how it feels.

Death Knight - Frost Strike has been changed to instant (src)
We changed it to instant.

Hunter - Pet talent tier costs (src)
I wanted to clear this up since it is understandably causing some confusion.
All pet tiers cost 3 points to advance. There are no talents that cost 5 points. In the beta some tooltips may say 5 but only 3 is enforced. Most importantly this means that there are not talents that are available only to BM hunters. They can get more talents - that's all.
Furthemore, the exotic pet abilities while interesting are just the same kind of unique abilities that every pet family gets, like web or prowl. Hope that clears some things up. :)

The 1.000.000 tuskar achievement was a joke (src)
It was a joke achievement. It has been removed. The name was transferred over to the Tuskarr reputation achievement.

Fish achievement issues (src)
We updated the fishing achievement "Master Angler of Stranglethorn" to check for the Arcanite Fishing Pole or the Hook trinket.

Hellfire Ramparts achievement will be fixed in the next build (src)
This will be fixed the next time we patch.

WWI keys - no eta for the next wave of e-mails (src)
He'll need to register the key and he'll be sent an e-mail with the Beta Upgrade information when the next wave of e-mails are sent out. We do not have an ETA of when that will be.