Breakfast Topic: Your 51-point talents

by Elizabeth Harper Aug 30th 2007 at 8:00AM

The Lich King is coming to World of Warcraft -- and with him ten more levels, ten more talent points, and (we presume) three additional tiers of talents for every tree. This means the question on the mind of many a theorycrafter is what these talents might be. And while it's been discussed thoroughly on the forums, today I'm asking you. What sorts of talents do you want to see available to your class for 51 talent points? And what sorts of talents do you expect Blizzard to implement?

Tags: 51, 51 talent points, 51-point talents, 51TalentPoints, talent tree, talent trees, talents, TalentTree, TalentTrees, world of warcraft, WorldOfWarcraft, wow

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)

Deus Mortus Sep 6th 2007 6:19PM

Druids:

Balance: an instant cast AOE
Feral: A new form (perhaps dragon or something cool like that) that does little bit less dmg then cat and is a little less resilient then bear, for soloing and pvp'ing uberness.
Restoration: A ress without a CD and the ability to cast all healing spells in tree form.

Hunters:

Beast Mastery: A talent that permanently enrages your pet, giving it a cooler model (perhaps armor) and boosts to defense and attack.
Marksman: A shot that drains all your mana and does damage equal to the amount of mana drained*2 but it can't be more then 2.5 times your RAP.
Survival: Your crits now have a chance to proc a small haste buff for you and your group.

Mages:

Arcane: Each time you hit a target with a damaging spell, you gain a small amount of spelldamage, it stacks up to 10 times and lasts a minute or so.
Fire: A persistant AOE surrounding the caster costing a small amount of mana every tick.
Frost: A shield that absorbs a set amount of dmg and it to your current target when it fills up.

Paladin:

Holy: a healing aura
Protection: a large amount of resilience that almost makes you uncrushable without any extra gear.
Retribution: An aggro dump

Priest:

Discipline: I really don't know, I really don't get this tree.
Holy: A large channeled heal, for MT healing.
Shadow: An instant cast high damage spell

Rogue:

Assassination: An extra combo point (So instead of 5 you can gain 6 points for a finishing move)
Combat: +10% damage
Subtlety: The ability to stealth a groupmember, for loosing aggro midcombat or sneaking up on a mob together.

Shaman:

Elemental: Improved shocks, the durations of their effects have all been doubled.
Enhancement: A spell that breaks all CC on the shaman and also makes the shaman immune to them for a minute or so.
Restoration: New totems, +5% damage done air totem, -10% damage taken earth totem, +10% healing water totem, and a fire totem that charges up for up to 15 minutes until the shaman unleashes it and it does a powerful fire spell (more powerful the longer it charged)

Warlock:

Affliction: The ability to put two curses up on one target (props for that idea go to mats)
Demonology: A spell that makes the lock a half demon, greatly increasing damage which can proc from each hit of the warlocks pet.
Destruction: Each spell has a chance of corrupting the target which decreases their resilience to all spells by 1%, stacks up to 10 times.

Warrior:

Arms: Each hit has a chance to proc a heal that heals 5% of the warriors hp.
Fury: An ability that gives a haste buff which % is equal to half the rage spend to activate it.
Protection: A shout that causes a lot of aggro.

Lesley Smith Aug 30th 2007 10:25AM

As a balance druid, it would nice to have ranks for Force of Nature, eg more Treants, or the Moonkin form.

Mecandes Aug 30th 2007 10:01AM

This may sound silly, but sometimes I wish my hunter had some kind of buff he could cast on others (other than party auras) -- buffing someone is just such a nice little social gesture. I always feel bad when a stranger buffs me and I cannot buff them back, you know?

ben1778 Aug 30th 2007 10:01AM

i'd like to see a different form of crowd control for warlocks, or an interrupt/stun ability (3-5 sec maybe) instead of the current fear mecahnics.

If they are going to give all priests fear ward in an upcoming patch it sounds like they are slowly doing away with the fear mechanic all together. Replace fear with something else that allows us some CC or a ranged casting interrupt on a c/d.

Panzor Aug 30th 2007 12:49PM

I'd love to see some high level talents that further the distance from the other trees. We need more and more specialization. I'd love to see a protection warrior talent like:

Heavy Plate - Your character can now wearest the heaviest armors ever crafted. Talent increases mitigation by 35%, reduces movement speed by 25%.

Or how about a warlock ability like:

The Dark Side - Your love for the shadow arts has gone beyond what mere mortals can fathom. Increases shadow damage by 50%. You must choose two spells from the other schools to lose permanently.

After all, we're talking about EXTREME specialization when you spend that many points to delve into a specific talent tree. Why shouldn't a character be distances from the other two?

Plus, I think this would help people fulfil the image of their character in their heads. Do people really imagine a protection warrior as someone that moves just as fast as a barbarian style warrior?

RizziNUp Aug 30th 2007 12:17PM

"The ability to create uber-bandages the same way Mages can create water & food would be a nice addition, though certaintly not worth 51 points."

The ability to create uber bandages is called lightwell. Though it currently sucks, next patch should be a MAJOR improvement. Each click of the lightwell will include all of your +healing (on my guy.. that will be a 4.2k bandage) and five different people can click on it. Sounds like a good 20k heal for only 400mana.

As for priests, circle of healing is a joke, and no one goes down the discipline tree if you're very serious about anything. I would much rather want a revamp of all my talents before getting more laugable 51pt talents.

Darlene Aug 30th 2007 10:29AM

As a warrior, I'd really love a better AOE.. Thunder clap really doesn't cut it :)

Kennychu Aug 30th 2007 10:30AM

As a feral druid i think that a good feral talent was something that was in the fake 51 point talent tree. Swiftshifting. Gives the ability to immedietly go from one form to another. It would still cost the same mana to go the the other form but it would allow us to not have to go back to caster form which would illeviate the damage caused during it and would help with the golbal cooldown when coming out of a form.

Uranium Aug 30th 2007 10:35AM

As a Holy Paladin, i too would like to see some sort of mass heal implemented. Also, it would be great to have a CD burn, similar to Preparation for rogues. Mana/health regen auras would be nice as well...especially when stacked with buffs.

lumiden Aug 30th 2007 10:37AM

@8 LOL FADE - I bet you put 2 points in Imp Fade too. HAHAHAH.

Scruffy Aug 30th 2007 10:39AM

On one hand... as a priest, I can't say I got much hope for a spiffy 51 pointer.

On the other, I'm shadow and so maybe things will stay as balanced (Discipline and Holy boned, Shadow ftw).

BUT, ignoring 51 pointers, think about the extra 10 points. If Blizz doesn't change the existing talents, there could be some interesting builds based around the TBC talents I think.

lolsmite with Spirit Tap, Spiritual Guidance/Surge of Light/Improved Death (5% spirit boost), and still have enough points to get Power Infusion, 5/5 Force of Will, 2/2 Improved Divine Spirit, 4/5 Reflective Shield? Might be hard stacking that spell crit and spirit but seems viable with expansion.

nirikun Aug 30th 2007 10:41AM

Ye gods, I can only imagine what nightmares/laugh fests the developers are having after seeing some of these suggestions, because most of them are terribly short-sighted or completely thoughtless.

I don't know much about Hunters or their talents, but I can comment on many of these:

Druids:

Instant Cast AoE: How does this help the Druid class or fit in with its style? A druid is not a mage.

Feral: And they need an extra form...why? Why not simply improve the existing forms?

Restoration: Um, perhaps you don't understand the specialty design of the Tree of Life. It's meant to increase the healing efficiency and power of HoT's, the Druid's bread and butter. Having it buff all of a Druid's healing spells is a very silly idea, not to mention it would make Druid's undisputed gods in healing. So much for class balance.

Mage:

A permanent water elemental? How does this fit a mage? And how is this balanced? Only certain classes are supposed to have pets, and elementals are chaotic forces. A mage with a permanent water elemental blasting at its opponent would be overpowered.

A persistent AoE would have to cost a lot of mana for it to be effectively balanced. Mages already have a near-persistent AoE anyway: it's called Arcane Explosion. I don't see how this is even necessary.

Arcane Damage buff: This is ridiculous. A constant buff that stacks up to 10 times and lasts a minute? That's a never ending buff. Almost useless in raids, and potentially godlike in PvP. How would it countered? How long would it last?

Priests:

Discipline: Discipline is basically becoming a support/PVP tree, come up with something there. A talent that increases holy damage, maybe. Something like that.

Holy: A channeled healing spell would help in PvE, but not so in PvP, and it would be difficult to pin down. Would it be an HoT or a direct heal?

I actually think Blizzard should make Priests specialists in Prayer of Mending-style reactive healing, a style that gives aggro to those healed instead of the Priest. Prayer of Mending is a brilliant spell.

I've been thinking about a more powerful weave, in the style of prayer of Mending but more of a reactive HoT. It could move between different characters and heal over time, increasing or decreasing based on the rate of damage being taken. It would expend all of its healing on one target that is taking tons of damage, spend very little on targets that are taking minor amounts of damage, etc. It would be great in PVP as well as PVE.

However, I don't know at the top of my head how its exact mechanics would work, and it's got flaws, considering its a reactive healing spell. How would it know when to move between different targets, how much would it scale, etc.

Maybe even an AoE style thing that puts PoM-style buffs on all targets in a certain radius and has them bouncing around everywhere. Sort've an "oh crap!" spell that can unleash tons of healing. Long cooldown would be required, but it would be ridiculously great in emergency situations.

In this vein, I would love to see talents that improve PoM.

Shadow: Shadow needs more crowd control and direct damage spells, to be sure. However, we already have a high damage, high crit rate spell: Shadow Word: Death.

Another idea that's been floating around in my head would be something like Shadow Word: Nightmare, a magic CC spell that incapacitates a target and does X damage over Y seconds. However, you could stack spells that have Shadow Word in their title (DoT it with Shadow Word: Pain, thus increasing the intensity of the nightmare, or toss out Shadow Word: Death to torture the target) and not have it break. All other damage spells or effects would break it, and if it breaks all DoTs of any kind on the target are dispelled. In other words, a type of CC that can actually do damage to a target without breaking it.

It could be potentially OP, but I don't think so. Since it could only be up on one target at a time, and you can't use Vampiric Touch on it, it wouldn't be able to kill a target that fast. In PVP it could be dispelled normally (trinket, priest, etc.), but it would definitely give S-Priests a chance to escape. In PVE it would be great for CC concerns, as a good S-Priest could keep refreshing the debuffs and potentially kill a target without having it ever touch the tank. Vampiric Embrace wouldn't do any damage do it, so the thing wouldn't break. Shadow Word: Nightmare, Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Embrace, Shadow Word: Death, rinse and repeat.

Any and all concerns would be nice. I sense it could be very OP.

Or something like Psychic Blast, an instant, direct damage AoE that stuns targets around the priest.

If you're going to throw out talent ideas, be sure that you include considerations from at least some different angles from different classes, situations, and areas in the game. That's what makes balance. Otherwise you're simply tossing ideas like children without thinking about their consequences and are wasting your time.

alex Aug 30th 2007 10:53AM

Holy Paladins need a HoT
Ret Paladins need an agro dump
Prot pallies need a a talent similar to divine strength or intellect but for stamina

Nogun Aug 30th 2007 10:57AM

As a healing Priest new Talents do nothing but scare me. They are the things that make me worse and other classes better.

mrkleen Aug 30th 2007 10:59AM

Warriors could definetly use better aoe than sweeping strikes and thunderclap or at least add improvements to the them so that sweeping strikes could affect more than 2 targets and thunderclap did twice as much damage. A Talent to turn left over rage into health would be cool too even if it was out of battle.

Scruffy Aug 30th 2007 11:08AM

Oh god. WoWhead gives the option to make builds up to level 80 with the existing trees. There goes my work day.

Rich Aug 30th 2007 11:08AM

Give Arms Warriors the ability to equip 2h maces/axes/swords along with a shield. It makes sense ("Arms" tree) and would help balance out our lack of threat from not having defiance. I may have to go to a 35/21/15 build at 80 if not (currently 35/23/3).

Rich Aug 30th 2007 11:10AM

BTW, to Warrior AOE people, have you ever hit Sweeping Strikes -> Berserker Stance -> Whirlwind in a crowd of mobs? I've put out over 1000 dps on some of the mana wyrm mobs at the beginning of Curator trash behind Opera.

Bangarang Aug 30th 2007 11:39AM

@8

fade doesnt dump aggro. what #9 says it more what I'm looking for.

Scruffy Aug 30th 2007 11:18AM

@29

Psychic Blast? Well with these new, fangled Inscriptions (of which knockback is mentioned...), how about instant AOE with Mind Blast length CD that knocksback?! That'd be spiffy. :D

As for a 51point Holy, a reagent based, party-wide (like Prayer of Fort) buff, with 10 charges and heals 2/3rds of a PoM? CD maybe 3-5 minutes. Can only be cast on YOUR party or a party in your raid group. 10 charges seems like a lot but then if you think about how much it heals and that it's reactive only....

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