Breakfast Topic: New BC Spells and Talents
by David Nelson 
Oct 10th 2006 at 8:00AM
After a long wait, the hunters finally had their spells and talents revealed for the Burning Crusade yesterday. With the long hunter spell/talent embargo nightmare now safely behind us, we can take a step back and look at which class got the best treatment and which class got the shaft.In my opinion, the druids came out the best for no other reason than the sheer coolness of their flight form. Additionally, I think the whole Tree of Life thing to be pretty interesting. As I have never played a druid before I am a sucker for shifting forms. On the other hand, I am not sure any one class got the short end of the stick. All the new stuff looks fairly useful, although I am sure some of you will vehemently disagree. In the end, some spells that don't look that interesting might be really useful in practice, and some things that look like they will be game breakers (priests dispelling the pally bubble...oh boy!) might not be so terrible.
What do you guys think? Which class got the best of it and which one got screwed?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Steve Oct 10th 2006 8:21AM
Mages got screwed big time. Priests, locks and hunters got pretty good deals with their new talents and spells. As far as druids go, i think they are extremely lucky to get flight form. /jealous
Amaris Oct 10th 2006 8:33AM
Since I've only played priests and hunters to lvl60, I can only say that they both got pretty nice stuff. Hunter talents are awesome.
And after I heard the druids get the flight form, I started a new druid alt. So druids get my vote for best treatment.
As for the worst treatment... Well everyone complains so much about the dispellation of paladin bubble, that I'll say they got screwed. Not that I care about it much, tho.
Greg Oct 10th 2006 8:46AM
As a druid I think that the new flight form is really cool. Ultimately though, it will be mostly novelty value, since mounts will be faster anyway (as they are now vs. cheetah form).
Quaddw Oct 10th 2006 8:50AM
I think them giving us Druids flight form is simply to try and "make up" for our somewhat gimpness. Would have liked ot have scene a dire cat form for feral druids but guess thats a no. Improved Leader of the Pack also is worthless :( I will still be specing all feral, but the BE warlock I am rolling will become my main and a hunter for the fun of it(never have really tried). IMO warlocks and hunters got the best overall treatment in the talents and spells
Ghostle Oct 10th 2006 9:07AM
Locks got a nice buff at first (UA was going to be the new defacto build for PVP). But then they had to go add a casting time before anyone had a chance to even play it. Locks got a way to reduce threat now, but only by 50% and wastes a shard.
Probably my own bias of having a rogue and a pali, but I think both kinda got shafted. Although rogues get one ability to try and stop from being kited now, we're still going be caugh unguaded. And as far as raiding is concerned, it should have been rogues who got an ability to redirect aggro, and not hunters. The pali bubble being dispelled, although nice since its annoying when fighting them, without it they are going to be a faster free kill.
Draegan Oct 10th 2006 9:23AM
Why do people complain about Druid gimpness? In my opinion they do alot of things well, but none as good as another "pure" class. They have good buffs and great support healing. A 41pt Holy Priest + a 41pt Resto Druid will make a great healing team in BC.
Duwanis Oct 10th 2006 9:30AM
This blog post modded -1 flamebait ;)
@Greg - actually devs have stated that flying form will be just as fast as normal flying mounts.
Hunter non-talent changes are interesting at best. It'll be nice to see them have an overall positive effect, but we'll see. I think those will affect everything about the class much more than just the new talents/spells.
Rogues and Warriors got some nice stuff as far as spell defense (or just defense in general as regards the rogue). Speaking of, I'm surprised nobody's whined about MT not being trainable.
I think if the bubble-dispel is as bad as the pallys make it out to be, it will be nerfed. The devs aren't mentally challenged, they're not going to kill the class. That's what beta testing is for.
Can't say I looked too hard at mages or priests, but I tend to agree that the majority of the changes have been positive.
Michael Oct 10th 2006 9:53AM
Warriors got shafted on Abilities, a few good ones, i very nice command shout (which i believe is derived from diablo 2 barbarian) but the victory rush, come one blizzard. not only do i not get a buff until i kill something, on top of that i only have 30secs to make use of it.
P.S. Can't wait to see walking trees everywhere.
kuri Oct 10th 2006 12:10PM
Let me tell you, Rogues got nothing spectacular. Name one eye-popping skill (well, one which will be practical), and I offer a lollipop.
Not saying we got "shafted", but it sure didn't meet expectations of highly increasing our raid DPS. Oddly enough, most rogues in my guild are considering going Combat Daggers/Seal Fate with the new amount of talents we will receive, both of which were available pre-expansion. That should say enough about the current expansion's lackluster talent upgrades for Rogues.
Matt Park Oct 10th 2006 10:58AM
Wow . . . I'm surprised no one mentioned shamans.
Yeah, we got dual wield, but that's only useful for enhancement shamans. Most of our new abilities are only a useful for groups - nothing that really benefits us by ourselves.
Elemental shamans got sort of screwed - we're really weak in two areas - low mana efficiency and threat management. Unrelenting storm won't help much (the amount of mana regenerated will be almost nil with lev. 70 mana pools) and threat generation only got worse (lightning overload will be the cause of many a wipe, mark my words).
Looks like we're back to being healbots. *sigh*
Dan Oct 10th 2006 11:19AM
Mages bit it hard. 2 of the 3 41 talent pts are horrible (slow and summon water elemental). Stand-alone the talents are really cool; however not worthy of spending 41 pts to get them.
Fire is the only viable build that will alot for huge dps.
also, the are reducing our threat reduction. Our talents for threat reduction are being SPLIT IN HALF, which means no more balls to the walls dps. As it is, I pull aggro specced for less threat and with pally buffs. No, I am just going to wand come bc seeing as though rank 1 anything will pull aggro.
Mat Oct 10th 2006 12:00PM
I can't say which is best, but I'm pretty excited about the hunter changes because they fit my style of play.
I second the excitement about seeing walking trees everywhere :)
Swiftlydead Oct 10th 2006 12:03PM
the 41 point marksmanship hunter talent is a OLOLOLOLOL joke
Truth Oct 10th 2006 12:44PM
Feral Druids got snuffed big time. They really needed to bring a Feral Druid up to 90% of the "pure" class they are emulating. If you are Feral, you should emulate a Warrior (DPS in cat, Tank in bear). Balance did not get much love either and their DPS should be 90% of a mage.
It should be Warrior + Druid > 2 Warriors.
Rogue + Druid > 2 Rogues.
Caster DPS + Druid > 2 Caster DPS
Priest + Druid > 2 Priests
As it stands, only the last one works. Druids are meant to fill multiple roles, not be stuffed into one role. So yes, resto got some love and Feral/Balance is just bleh gimpness again.
For all you saying blah blah druids are fine healers, MOST OF US did not roll a Druid to be a main healer. When we started our druid the role was not Primary Healer. It was fit the hole for the group.
Druid dude Oct 10th 2006 12:29PM
It's really hard to say who got lovin' and who got hosed until we actually get to play with the new goodies.
On paper, it *looks* like most classes got some cool stuff. Like this article said though, once we get in to playing these new talents and so forth, only then will we see the real value (or lack of). For now, it's all just Theorycraft. Fun to speculate though!
The biggest challenge I see so far is picking which talents to not have.
For my Druid, I will go heavy in Balance for the leveling grind, so that part is easy. But at 70, back in to the world of raiding, its going to be harder to decide what talents to pass on.
For my Warrior, a leveling spec is going to be a lot harder to work out. Fury and Arms both have some pretty sexy stuff.
For my Hunter, the leveling spec is probably going to be the hardest to figure out. With the increased range talent now in the Survival tree, and requiring points just to get to it, deciding what to give up is going to be hard. And with Arcane Shot looking like it will become much more central to shot rotations, the talent that reduces the cooldown on it might not be as useless as it has been in the past.
Can't wait to get in there and try this stuff out!
Asir Oct 10th 2006 12:41PM
Personally I think rogues got screwed. The talents we recieved are not even close to being on par with the other classes. Already Fury warriors can keep up with rogues in damage. We can still edge them out most of the time but at least they have survivability, damage, and group utility. They also get a nice boost in damage with the new talents (adrenaline rush 41pt with half the cooldown). Rogues got crappy 41 point talents. Come on Mutilate would be good if it didn't require the target to be poisoned and had the same crit rate as BS but most will pass on it. Combat's talent is a joke and will hardly raise DPS at all especially for PvE when you stay behind your target to avoid missing as much. I would say hunters got the most love. They get hit with a nerf bat on AP but all ranged weapons get a significant DPS increase and the Beastmaster tree is sick (30% Attack Speed ftw).
Stykk Oct 10th 2006 12:58PM
Im a Warlock, always have been. We started out with an AWSOME affliction tree, and a really good Destruction tree....now Destruction is where it is at, the Nighfall Conflag will come back swinging with backlash....mark my words....Destruction is where it is at for a warlock after 60...Felguard...PSH....you have to gimp both of the other trees to get him, he better be AMAZING.......
Unkle Oct 10th 2006 1:12PM
Wohoo for hunters. Maybe I will get invites to groups now that I will have some utility. Also, it looks like the changes in agi/weapon damage & crit will help our DPS over time a whole bunch, so that will be great too.
Can't hardly wait.
Jeff Oct 10th 2006 1:38PM
I'm very happy with the protection warrior stuff, I like tanking alot, so that tree is just lovely.
Druid stuff is cool, Currently I'm resto and looking foward to being a walking/talking tree. But the balance tree is actually more tempting now than it was. (I was Oomkin for a while and loved it honestly)
Hunter stuff looks cool, he's my newest 60, so I don't quite know where I'm going with him yet, but he's been beast and will likely stay that way.
I only have those 60s, and I don't know the other classes well enough to comment yet.
Unkle Oct 10th 2006 2:01PM
.... but can the walking/talking tree also /dance?