Ghostcrawler: Okay with Titan's Grip not being an optional talent
by Adam Holisky 
Jan 12th 2009 at 7:00PM
One of the founding points in WoW's talent system, or any game's talent system, is to allow players to customize their characters based on their personal preferences. Want to play a healer with your Priest? Great, here's a few dozen holy talents. Your Paladin needs to crit some face off? Retribution is your key.Within each of these talent trees are many, many choices. And while cookie cutter specs eventually develop, the option is still there to allow for whatever spec or combinations of specs you decide works best for you. The rest of the world be damned, it's your choice.
However there are some exceptions to this. These occur in talents that we all need to play, more or less. Or in more specific terms there are talents that the rest of the tree is designed around. One such talent is Titan's Grip, and according to Ghostcrawler Blizzard is okay with that (for now).
This paradigm present a deviation of sorts, where in previous iterations of talent trees Blizzard has made a point to stay away from any major defining talent. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in that these talents are useful and provide a great aspect to the game. However at the same time, if people are going to be forced to spec into them, either because they're so great or because every other talent essentially requires them, then why not just make the super-uber-awesome talent part of the root class abilities?
Instead of having Titan's Grip be something a Warrior has to spec into, why not just make it an ability that only works when spec'd deep into the fury tree?
I have a feeling this might be happening in the distant future, but for now everyone will be putting that mandatory point into the fury tree.
Article art from the WoW Trading Card Game, copyright Upper Deck.
Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Talents
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
shinken Jan 12th 2009 7:06PM
Fury dps has always gotten out of control ( remember the rage nerf?) By making TG mandatory for good fury dps they can tune it to keep fury warriors from out dps'ing everyone as they do later in content.
Lemons Jan 12th 2009 11:08PM
God have I noticed this. One or my best friends in wow plays a fury warrior. I used to consider him somewhat of a noob, but lately his been pwning face. he does almost 3k dps in a heroic and he said he did 4.2k on Loatheb last night.
I guess it helps that he's got some nice gear lately, but come on! I've gotten some "nice" gear lately and I'm not seeing those kind of numbers.
Dulock Jan 13th 2009 7:09AM
I play fury and finished out Loatheb with 9k dps. Sure when done right you get crazy buffed but it was so nice to brag when I ended up 3k higher then the next dps. I love where fury is at, I still just wish we had a threat dump. Thankfully I play a night elf and can shadow meld but I heard that was getting a nerf.
Naix Jan 13th 2009 9:47AM
9k dps? What mod were you using to track this?
SS or it did not happen.
Thebum Jan 14th 2009 6:13AM
He did say on loatheb,which means he got 50% extra crit. 9k dps doesn't seem hard to get on that fight.
Amogayvhi Jan 12th 2009 7:12PM
This isn't really anything new. Back with the launch of BC it was the same way with shamans. If you wanted to be enhancement you /had/ to spec for their dual wield talent, even though for the longest time you could also spec for a two handed. It just would never even be comparable.
Infact pretty much from the start theres been numerous cases of /required/ talents if you wanted to be a X class that does X role.
Saelorn Jan 12th 2009 7:11PM
No talent is mandatory, but some have been defining:
Shadowform comes to mind. It's a defining part of the speck. It's the reason you go down that tree. It's really, really cool.
Mortal Strike was like that before, but its sanctity seems to be challenged more and more as of late.
Carlos Jan 12th 2009 7:13PM
Retribution paladins can't go without Crusader Strike or Divine Storm.
Frost Death Knights don't not pick up Howling Blast.
You're hard pressed to find a fire mage without Living Bomb.
Every balance druid I know has Typhoon.
Enhancement shaman will always pick up dual wield spec.
---Point I'm making is...there will always be things that are essential for doing what you want to do when it comes to talents and speccing. I don't see Blizzard ever making Titan's Grip baseline because even if it worked better if you were specced as fury, you'd still have arms warriors with double damage dealing Bladestorms, and warrior tank threat generation would be unbelievable.
SaintStryfe Jan 12th 2009 7:26PM
Well there's a difference. With ENH Shaman and Fury Warriors, they've developed the talent trees around them - other skills are there simply to enhance another talent. Those other examples are just good talents.
Zeplar Jan 12th 2009 7:28PM
Actually, many many raiding balance druids avoid Typhoon. It's very useful in PVP and... slightly...useful while soloing, but it's not good dpm and you don't want to use it in a group anyway due to the knockback.
A better argument would be:
Every feral has Mangle. NOT OPTIONAL
Every balance has Moonkin. NOT OPTIONAL
Resto has a number of options, from Regrowth-central to Healing Touch or Nourish or an all-round HoT 'n Heal build... heavily dependent on their glyphs as well as talents, though.
But tree form is not mandatory for resto, there's the moonkin/swiftmend build and the old Dreamstate Resto. Although, it seems as tree of life gets buffed more and more, it's no longer worthwhile to sacrifice it for mana regen.
retronvoltec Jan 12th 2009 8:06PM
One thing that has been on my mind since TG came out is that, like the card, you would kinda think its arms, one big problem i read during TBC was that arms warriors dps wasnt as sustained as fury, TG, you would think, would change that right?
And to make up for the fact of double 2H dmg, couldnt they swap bladestorm and TG?
One of the big things about Arms was swinging a giant 2 handed weapon around, whats better than one giant weapon? TWO giant weapons.
Anyway, thats my opinion on the matter, take it as you will
jbodar Jan 12th 2009 10:19PM
To take it a different way, "What's better than Dual-Wield? Dual-wielding 2-handers!" It's just "6 of one; half-dozen of the other". I like the way each tree has a kind of synergy and I plan to try out both Arms and Fury as soon as I build up some decent DPS gear. Prot is just too fun right now, plus I can tank instances.
tanknspank Jan 12th 2009 11:15PM
Most raiding balance druids skip(or should) that talent. It's actually pretty bad in most group PvE situations. Cool, but not required or defining in the least; that honor goes to Moonkin.
Flint Jan 13th 2009 5:09AM
I realise I'm one of a kind but my enhancement shaman has used a shield and one-hander since day one and has never had the desire or need to go dual-wield. It's working out pretty great as well, though I have to remind that I'm a soloer.
lsschwartz Jan 13th 2009 7:33AM
Like someone else said, my druid is designed for PVE and has not picked up typhoon either, it's fun in PVP but in a raid or dungeon it looses it's utility.
Offsprnge Jan 12th 2009 7:17PM
Haunt.
Cyanea Jan 12th 2009 7:36PM
If they want to let us REALLY spec the way we want to...
What's with all the arrows on the talent trees that force us to fill up prerequisites? I can understand if to pick up Improved Smash Face you need to pick up the talent Smash Face...but look at the Affliction tree. We HAVE to take Unstable Affliction to let our Corruption crit, even if we may not particularly WANT it. (I personally wouldn't mind dropping it if the dualspec system came out and I had a questing spec and a dungeon spec). I can think of a half dozen other places where I'd like to put that point.
Cyanea Jan 12th 2009 7:43PM
As an addition: I always figured that the end-tree talents were SUPPOSED to be spec-defining and that the real customization comes in when you're picking the rest of the talents, and can choose whether or not to pick up ones based on whether or not they help your particular playstyle. (Like I don't have Imp Howl of Terror because it has very little use in PvE, nor did I pick up Imp Drain Soul because the 15% mana isn't worth it to me versus where I put those other two points).
What they should do is create more abilities for each tree that are useful if you like them, but not "class defining". I know any number of Affliction Warlocks who don't pick up Dark Pact. Most agree that it's overshadowed by Life Tap in the later game, and a pet's mana pool doesn't scale as well when you hit eighty versus when you're fourty. I personally keep it because in longer boss fights, being able to dip into my pet's pool helps keep the healer's work down.
sephirah Jan 12th 2009 8:05PM
I don't see why people complain about that.
TG is a "must have" talent. So what? Lucky you, more than half of the trees of the various classes have 51 talents that are pretty awful.
Warlock example:
Affliction -> Haunt: good
Demonology -> Metamorphosis: situational
Destruction -> Chaos Bolt: not so good
I'd be very happy to have demo and destro with 51 pts talents I look at and say "Hey, I really want that talents!".
Instead locks specs are or full affliction (Haunt is good) or demo/destro cause there's no point to invest in deep talents in those trees.
Jared Jan 12th 2009 8:08PM
Yeah, and when you spec deep enough into the Beast Master tree, just give me Bestial Wrath, and The Beast Within too, I don't want to have to spend those points I want two more.
Oh yeah and for my druid, just give me tree form if I go deep enough in the resto druid.
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Clearly there are talents that define trees, and there are talents that are better than others. This is OK. The end.