Mages received many changes intended to flesh out rotations and make them more interesting. Arcane Mages now have a more complex rotation. Fire Mages now have tools to control the random nature of their spells. Frost Mages are now considerably stronger at sustained damage dealing, and now viable in PvE. Much of the crowd control and survivability that was unique to Frost has been spread to the whole class, or made available to all specs as talents.
The new talent system redefines how you create your character in World of Warcraft, while keeping the core style and feeling of each class and specialization intact. When launching the patch for the first time and hitting ‘N’ to open your talent pane, you’ll notice a number of changes. The most obvious is a new layout for specializations, which now show the Core Abilities for each class spec. These are the defining skills that can only be used when you have that spec active. The talent tab will show you the new talent system. You have a wide variety of useful and powerful abilities available to you regof your spec, but you may only select one talent from each row. Many of these tend to be old talents, sometimes with a bit of a change, while others are completely new abilities.
Glyphs are now a bit more focused, and a bit more fun. Prime glyphs are being removed, and Major glyphs are taking on the majority of the power and utility bonuses from both Prime and Minor glyphs. Minor glyphs are instead focusing on more fun aspects, and cosmetic customization.
AoE looting! Round up a ton of enemies, nuke ‘em, and then pick up all of their loot with a single right click – bag space permitting. The Daily Quest cap is removed. Account-wide mounts, pets, and achievements! It’s finally here, and you’ll be able to enjoy just about every mount and pet you own on any character. New spells are now learned automatically when you level up. Class trainers are only needed to change talents, glyphs, class specialization, or to utilize the dual specialization feature. Mana pools are capped.
World Event: Attack on Theramore Isle Warchief Garrosh, obsessed with assuring the Horde’s supremacy over Kalimdor, launches an all-out attack against Jaina's island home of Theramore. Though valiant Alliance defenders rush to repel the sudden onslaught, they’ll soon find themselves unprepared for the terrible scope of Garrosh's true plans… This Scenario will become available in the weeks leading up to the launch of Mists of Pandaria on September 25.
In some zones, players are now able to form a group with other players from a select pool of realms. When a player is in a zone that is set as a “cross-realm zone”, in addition to seeing other players from their native realm, they’ll also seamlessly see (and be able to play with) players from other realms. Players will always be able to group and quest as they normally would with players from their native realm. This functionality will be enabled for a limited number of realms at first, and will be granted to additional realms as we near the release of Mists of Pandaria.
Valor points have been converted to Justice points, and Conquest points have been converted to Honor points. Neither of the resultant currencies (Justice and Honor) have an enforced hard-cap at this time. Players are no longer able to earn Valor or Conquest points (bosses drop Justice, and arenas are closed). Items formerly purchasable for Valor/Conquest are available for Justice/Honor.
Spell Penetration has been replaced by PvP Power on existing items. Head enchants removed Enchants that modify the gear in your head slot have been removed from the game. This includes older head enchants of every type. Relics, ranged, and thrown items The slot in which ranged, relics, and thrown items were previously equipped has been removed. All weapons should now be equipped in the weapon slot. Ranged weapons, including wands, have been adjusted to be more powerful. Ranged weapons no longer have a minimum range.
