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Long-time World of Warcraft fans may remember the last few weeks before The Burning Crusade was launched as a time of radical changes in preparation for the expansion pack. Today history repeats itself as Blizzard pushes patch 3.02 "Echoes of Doom" to the live servers in preparation for the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. While patch 3.02 isn't as world-altering as what's coming in the expansion, "Echoes of Doom" offers plenty of new stuff for gamers to try and lots of changes in the offing for many of the game's classes.
Among the biggest changes players can expect on any patch day is the prospect of class adjustments. "Echoes of Doom," certainly doesn't disappoint in this category. Some of the biggest changes in the game come for Hunters, who get a massive re-do to their own talent tree, but more importantly, get a radical makeover for their furry (or scaly or slimy) animal companions. Hunter pets will now have their own talent trees in the fields of Tenacity (tanking), Cunning (Burst DPS) and Ferocity (straight DPS) and each individual pet type will have their own special ability. Even better, a new 51-point talent in the Hunter Beast Mastery tree will allow players to tame "exotic" creatures like Devilsaurs and Core hounds. Expect many, many expeditions to Un'goro Crater and Molten Core in the next few days.
While Hunters are getting the most radical shifts, other classes should expect a talent point refund and to spend a little time figuring out where things stand with the new changes. Warriors will be spending a lot of time picking through all the new tanky joys in a drastically revamped Protection tree. Spell-casting classes will now have much broader gear choices as different class-specific spell-casting statistics are combined into a universal "Spellpower" stat suitable for any magician. That should reduce the amount of useless gear drops in high-end raids, though it will no doubt increase the arguments over which class "deserves" a certain piece of gear. While less radical, many of the other classes will be experiencing big changes as well. All of the relevant data can be found in Blizzard's official patch notes.
