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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: New Wrath talents
by Zach Yonzon 
Jul 23rd 2008 at 8:00AM
Personally, I'm really excited about The Art of War, just because of the name (it's one of my favorite books, after all). It's also currently bugged in Beta, with crazy reports of over 20k damage on a Judgement. It'll be fixed pretty soon, of course, but I can't help but geek out over that. The Death Knight talent Infested Corpse looks particularly gruesome! And then I want to spec for Haunt to complement SL/SL. If you haven't looked at the new talents yet, you can check them out over at Wowhead's talent calculators or Blizzard's official one. Did anything catch your eye?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast Topics, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Sinthar Jul 23rd 2008 10:45AM
Im glad someones excited about the mage talents. Me im rerolling pally. The talents as they stand for mages suck, in spite of what an optomistic Mr Christian thinks. Mages (as it stands now) are being religated to CC and table duty. As for some peoples comments about arena viability for paladins, all i can say is roll a mage, then you will appreciate the benefits of a pally. Not saying pallys ARE good, just a hell of a lot better than mages. Heres hoping that blizz gives em both a bit more love (but forgive me if i dont hold my breath)
superfrank Jul 23rd 2008 11:03AM
I don't understand why everyone QQs about mage talents - they look awesome!
frost mages getting a 5 second stun is an outrageous boost to their roots... whereas the freezes are good against melee classes, the stun is now good against warlocks, shadow priests, hunters etc.
fire mages geting to use a 2nd aoe on top of arcane explosion for super extra power seems pretty decent.
and arcane mages getting a 1-2k instant damage spell with 3s cooldown seems pretty damn good tbh.
Sinthar Jul 23rd 2008 11:43AM
Superfrank, now compare what you have said vs say the hunter talents, or the warrior ones. The freeze for frost ONLY works on frozen targets, which sorta makes it a lot less desirable. The AOE for firemages is a joke imo as the mage has to be in COMBAT range to catch people - not the most survivalbe range for any mage, the only useful one is the arcane barrage which does 1-2k dam - woo woo. Now do that with a hunter doing 5k arcane shots on you or a warrior chewing your face off, or a warlock in demon form - sorta pales into insignificance imo.
Solex Jul 23rd 2008 10:47AM
For my rogue all I can really do is kind of shake my head, the moves aren't bad per say they're just so amazingly underwhelming. People are getting spirit wolves, demon forms or megaton dps moves. You know what we get? A crappy aoe that hits 5 people then cd's for 2 minutes, if it stacks with blade flurry 10 people. Wow that's... not going to be useful outside of hyjal like instances. The throwing specialization is pretty bad too and it just seems like an attempt by blizzard to make every tree viable for pvp.
Don't get me wrong prey on the weak is cool too but... we're really not getting anything mind blowing, not even close. It seems like blizz doesn't really know what to add to rogues anymore.
Christian Jul 23rd 2008 10:54AM
As a Warrior.... i'm respeccing prot.
Nizari Jul 23rd 2008 10:58AM
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=53503
Sloegin Jul 23rd 2008 11:25AM
The 51 mage talents in their current state are a lot like the 41 priest talents in BC, no player in their right minds will spec that far down the trees to grab em.
Magic Absorbtion will rock the house for mages, as will some of the deep frost talents. Spellpower will be a must for Arc-Fire and Arc-Frost builds. Deep Frost synergy with a frosty DK will be amazing.
The 51 talents? Laughable.
Jim Jul 23rd 2008 1:32PM
Are you referring to the confusing BC Beta 41 point talents? Or the current, incredible 41 point talents for priests? Because I'm pretty sure that Vampiric Touch is the best raiding talent in the game, and CoH is one of the best. And the second(?) best healing spec for arenas has Pain Suppression.
Either way, let's hope it's a good comparison. Maybe it looks bad now, but will turn out to be great for mages when content matches it (CoH) or it's changed/tweaked like the other 2.
sloppykins Jul 23rd 2008 12:05PM
with the new spell power switch, what is gonna happen to enchants like sunfire and soulfrost?
Hasteur Jul 23rd 2008 1:20PM
With the moving of Soul Link lower (and removing requirements to getting it) this really opens up new frontiers of warlock customization.
While this takes it's inspiration from SL/SL and Felguard I'd like to present "Felguard's Siphoning Link" (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=IzxMbxbNomZbgcksg0AccMz). It does 2 things quite well
1. SL/SL, which is proven to be quite effective in PVP
2. Felguard. We all remember our Felguards that we played with for a while when getting to 70. Now he's (or she's) back with answers to how to keep themselves alive.
To maximize the power of the Felguard points are invested in Fel Synergy. If you look closely if you max Fel Synergy out with Soul Link you transfer 15% of the damage dealt to you to your minion and then heal the minion for 15% of the damage that you just took. So you effectiveley reduce the enemy's damage by 15%. In addition points are invested into shadow mastery because having extra shadow damage will have cascading effects on all abilities that are a percentage of damage.
A singlular point is invested in the Succubus improvement for when you are needed as a backup CC for instances so that your Seduce provides just a little bit more holding power.
In short, WotLK provides me with the ability to use both of my favorite talent specs to become even more a distributor of potent portable pain.
Alveredus Jul 23rd 2008 6:02PM
The only way Titan's Grip will provide anything more than a 5% buff to Fury DPS (with spotty rage generation) is if:
A) They rethink the penalty.
B) Inscriptions massively change how weapon talents like Whirlwind work.
C) Two hand swords, maces and axes are massively rebalanced. (Currently, they have 30% more DPS and 130% more stats. But that doesn't add up to a massive DPS increase.)
D) Bloodthirst and/or heroic strike are rebalanced to "hit with both hands". Ie. instead of being based on AP, based on weapon damage. For instance, blood thirst currently hits for AP*45/100. Instead, it could hit for AP * 20% Weapon Damage/100.
As it stands, it makes more sense for most DPS warriors to go with Axe spec for a much bigger boost.
Ikarus Jul 24th 2008 11:33AM
as a mage i dont want to get hit by one of your two handers with heroic strike, let alone both simultaneously. don't hold your break for that one.
Alveredus Jul 24th 2008 12:22PM
As it currently stands, Titan's Grip would provide a 5-8% maximum DPS gain while pretty much ruining rage generation and making rotations impossible to keep up after a string of misses.
There are other talents that will provide a greater DPS gain for the investment of five points without the liability of jumpy rage generation.
I want to take Titan's Grip, as do many warriors, but it will need SOME kind of change to be justifiable.
AV_alliance Jul 24th 2008 5:24AM
As a pvp warrior i will role a Death Knight or Warlock and never look back.