Now that we’re getting closer to the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we’re finally starting to see more information popping up in blue posts (posts from Blizz employees). If you’re interested in gear changes and how the new gear will be different from the old one, read on.

The new Talent-Mastery system has been designed to be easily accessible to all players, both new and old. According to Blizzard, the new system has been designed to make it virtually impossible to spend your talent points in any way that could cause you to lose control. If it works as advertised, it will be a huge improvement over the current system where there are multiple ways new players can incorrectly spend talent points and unknowingly wear themselves out. Due to spending talent points incorrectly, these poor new players are dooming their leveling speed to excruciatingly slow.

While the new changes will be cool and awesome and all, in theory it will still be possible to spend your hard-earned talent points in a silly way. Experienced players who already know how to make the most of their talents will be even happier with the options in their talent tree, because as they continue to spend points, they will receive additional bonuses in that talent tree.

The domain bonus distribution will have 3 different domain bonuses! We don’t know much about it right now, but here’s what we DO know: Mastery bonuses will apply to every class and every talent tree. This adds up to 30 different mastery bonuses in the game.

You get the first two mastery stats by spending on your favorite talent tree and collecting your class gear. Some might say that by doing this, Blizz is trying to prevent hunters from looting all the gear created for other classes. So if the hunter in your party takes the cloth pants, he will lose his armor mastery bonus. Another bonus is a slight increase in damage and healing for all classes. Some mastery bonuses are likely to substitute for some talents, making talent choices much more flexible.

It will be interesting to see what other upcoming changes Blizzard has in store for us.