The first World of Warcraft discussion panel at the 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational was a class discussion panel meant to update players on the state of development on classes for the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King Expansion. The panel went through all the classes starting with everyone's new favorite, the Death Knight. Some classes were talked about more than others, but all are very much still under development and balancing. Things could still change drastically before release.

Death Knight

Several key items were discussed about the upcoming Death Knight class. The first being that Blizzard really wanted the class to be versatile. They do not want to force you into a single role, instead they want you to be able to move from tanking to DPS and back without having to respec. They are very concerned over the perceived tank shortage, stating that many groups wait for extended periods to start because they are looking for a tank. They hope that Death Knights can fill this role and yet still DPS.

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A mean looking Tauren Death Knight

Also discussed was the rune system used for Death Knight abilities. The system allows you to customize the runes that you use to focus on your key abilities. Once used a rune has a 10 second cooldown before it can be used to power another spell.

Hunters

Hunters will be getting a very welcome change in the way shots work. No longer will Steady Shot clip into your autoshot stopping it from happening. This is a common issue where Hunters actually hurt their own DPS due to interrupting their normal shots. Many hunters get around this right now with shot rotation macros that ensure they can not clip their shots, however many more hunters know nothing about macros and end up with reduced DPS.

Also Blizzard announced that they are completely reworking the pet system t try and get some additional pet variation in the game. They are not happy that most players only have cats, ravagers or boars and are aiming to give pets their own talent trees instead of the current pet skill system. One pet ability that was discussed was called cornered that would function similar to a MOBs enrage, causing your pet to do an additional 20% damage while at 20% or less health.

Mages

Mages will be getting an ability called Frostfire bolts in an attempt to make Elementalist more viable than they currently are.

Priests

The new 51 point talent abilities were revealed for the priest class, and all focus on strengthening that trees main function.

The Holy tree will gain Divine Hymn, which will be a heal placed on a party member that in addition puts an opponent that strikes them into a trance for a short duration. This gives a holy priest another healing option and some minor crowd control.

The Shadow tree will gain an ability aimed at making shadow priests more viable in PvP and is called Dispersion. It will reduce incoming damage by 90% and regenerate 6% of your health and mana per second while active. While under its effect you will be able to move, but not cast any further spells. It should allow Shadow priests to weather a storm of incoming damage in PvP.

Lastly the Discipline tree will be gaining the Guardian Spirit ability, which provides a guardian spirit pet to a party member. When that member takes a killing blow in combat the spirit takes the strike instead.

Druids

Druids will see several changes and at least one new ability.The changes include the ability to use entangling roots indoors. This is to allow them to function as a version of CC in instances. Changes were also being looked at for cyclone however it seems to be decided to leave it as is. If they removed the diminishing returns it is felt it would be too good in PvP and limit the damage output of a druid in PvE as players would be expected to recast it constantly.

The new ability that they are to gain is called flourish and is a fast casting (1.5 seconds) healing spell that's healing amount is based on the number of HoTs on the target.

Shamans

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A Shaman and Death Knight Going at it in Combat

Shamans will see several changes in the expansion and both of the major ones could be considered huge buffs, together they are probably the best change shaman have ever had. The first big change will be to totems, which will now affect all players in a raid, instead of just players in the shamans party. Also several totems are being looked at to be either combined or reworked so that there are not quite so many totems to choose from.

The other major change for shaman is gaining the "Hex" ability, a new crowd control spell that will change the target into a frog. Players that are hexed will be able to still move but not cast spells or use abilities. Currently it is being tested as a 0.5 second cast time and lasts for roughly 8 seconds.

Rogues

The Rogues sap ability is being changed to improve it usefulness.. It will now be able to be used against almost any target, not just humanoids. anything that can think will be able to be sapped.

Rogues will also gain a new ability called Fan of Knives that has been taken from Warcraft 3 and moved into WoW. Fan of Knives will hit everything in a small area of effect and provide some AoE burst damage for the class. While still being tuned, it was mentioned that it will be on a fairly short cooldown, probably a minute.

Paladins

One of the big discussion points around paladins was the current state of poor itemization for retribution paladins. Blizzard is going to attempt to move paladins retribution gear into being the same as warrior and death knight DPS gear. They feel that in this way they can make more properly itemized gear available.

Paladins will be gaining a new reactive type healing spell called Hand of Purity that will function in much the same way as a priest prayer of mending. It will allow the paladin to do preemptive healing which should balance out paladin healing compared to other classes healing in some encounters.

Warriors

The change that many players were looking forward too was confirmed, and is called Titans Grip. This new ability will allow warriors to dual wield two handed weapons. Not a lot of details yet on the exact mechanics, but it will be there and will likely be in the Fury tree.

Another new ability talked about was the Bladestorm, in an effort to make the Warrior feel more like they did in Warcraft 3. Bladestorm will most likely be in the Arms tree.

Protection warriors are also going to see several changes that will allow them to do additional damage to make them more solo viable. This should make all those tanks out there happy.

Warlocks

Warlocks will be excited by several of the changes that are being proposed. The first one is the demonic circle, which will allow Warlocks to mark and area on the ground and then teleport back to it.

The other change is the proposed 51 point talent in Demonology. The talent is a demonic transformation ability that changes the warlock into a Illidan look alike. While in this form you loose your pet, but become a hand to hand fighter. You will also gain many demonic abilities such as an AoE fire ability and Shadowbolts. This form is under a lot of review as Blizzard wants to get it right.