Spooncraft

Raiding in the World of Warcraft has had more than a few face lifts over the past year. So where exactly does that leave us now? What will be changing now in Wrath of the Lich King? A lot in a very good way it seems. They’re changing some of the boss mechanics so when you’ve met the timer of the fight you’re pretty much guaranteed a wipe, however there will be some bosses that you will be able to beat regardless of time.

Enrage
Creatures that used to “Frenzy” like Magmadar, Gluth, Princess Huhuran, Halazzi, etc. now “Enrage” instead. Tranquilizing Shot has been changed to dispel Enrage effects, and the wording on all those spells and associated emotes has been changed to reflect the name change to Enrage.

Frenzy
Creatures that used to “Enrage”, now “Frenzy” instead. This is the type of effect that typically happened at low health or some other combat trigger. Examples of this would be all the Blackrock Orcs in Redridge, Jan’alai’s low health/timed increase in damage, Maexxna at low health, etc. These effects are not dispellable, you are meant to deal with the increased damage as part of the fight.

Berserk
Many of our boss encounters have timers where if you do not defeat the encounter within the allotted time, the boss will suddenly do RADICALLY more damage. Players are not intended to be able to deal with the damage dealt by a Berserk boss, and a wipe should be around the corner. We try not to use the “Berserk” term for nothing else but these kinds of timers. (src)

And what about Death Knights? We have a new class capable of dealing amazing DPS as well as tanking so how exactly are they going to fit into the grand scheme of things? Speaking of open positions, how about other classes? It’s always good form to bring at least one priest for a raid wide fort buff, druids are great for mark of the wild and their varying auras when in final forms, shaman with their totems, paladins and blessings, so on and so forth.

We don’t know yet which buffs / debuffs will stay class specific. Class-specific buffs mean that if you’re the player, you’re happy and get invited to a lot of raids. If you’re the raid leader, you may be less happy because you have to stack the raid with the perfect set of buffs. (src)

Ideally around 2 of each class should be in a raid. It can’t be 2.5 because most raids require 7-8 healers and not 5. Changing this would be pretty difficult as it would mean adding stiffer enrage timers and other penalties for bringing too many healers. Shamans, paladins and druids (and maybe priests) are probably going to be closer to 3 per raid because their specs are so different and one of them can heal. The question remains of who goes home if the DK comes in? Though a just as valid question is who goes home if the moonkin comes. (src)