Mana mana

I'm confident now that my favourite class (rogue, duh) is my favourite because of its resource system. Energy and combo-points are the greatest synergy known to MMO. Similarly, classes I dislike are using mana.

And the worst of them are not mages or warlocks. The worst of them are hunters and retribution paladins.

Damage-dealing gameplay in WoW is a game of resources. You usually have to hold balance: rogue fears energy-cap as much as she doesn't like sitting at 5 CP, warrior wants to hit things, but he has to consider his rage generation, death knight has to hold 4 different resources in his head. Mages and warlocks are tied to time as a resource — all spells require timing, whether to cast them in time or recast them appropriately.

Retridins were facerollers in PvE from the start of WotLK. Infamous FCFS rotation holds its ground. Why? Because there are no resources retridins use. They have global cooldown and a bunch of local cooldowns. Gee, how can this be no fun! It's like you get railroad train for Christmas, but you can only put passengers in and pull them out, because train goes all by itself stopping at the station for a few moments.

Hunters are trickier, but the problem is identical. There is almost nothing to consider besides the GCD and abilities' cooldowns. “Omigod, Serpent Sting fell off! Oh well, here we go, reapplied it.” End of story. It's much less boring in PvP, but if nobody's heading your way — same thing. “Burst, you say? Let me see what's not on CD and fire it.” It reminds me about a certain PvE rotation. Oh, retridins, right.

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So what do we have here. Hunters will get focus instead of stupid mana in Cataclysm. Paladins will get stupid mana instead of stupid mana. Paladins? If noone invents something absolutely brilliant, you're screwed. Enhancement shamans may have something for ya, but although I didn't get myself to play one, I doubt there is something besides wolfs.