Are there bad talents?
by Eliah Hecht 
Jul 29th 2009 at 1:00PM
Tree Bark Jacket, a resto-druid-themed blog that was new to me, has an interesting post up about whether there is such a thing as an entirely bad talent. The author's argument is that no, there is not, the reason being that even talents that are regularly dismissed are still useful sometimes; they're just situational.
For instance, Improved Tranquility, while certainly sub-par in 25-man raids, shines in heroics, and Living Seed is nice for healing tanks through chunky damage.
On a broader scope, Keeva makes the important point that you can't make all your talent decisions based on Recount or on people's advice from Elitist Jerks (etc.). Everyone's playstyle and raid makeup is different, and every raid encounter is different.
Here's a personal example: It may be hard to convince your DPS to use Lightwell in 90% of fights, but your tanks will love you for it during a Maexxna web wrap. Does this mean you should take it? That's for you to decide. I kept it while Naxx was still progression content for us, and ditched it in Ulduar where I couldn't find much use for it.
In the end I mostly agree with Keeva. The majority of talents in our talent trees are useful in some situation or other, whether it's raid healing vs. tank healing, 5-mans vs. raids, PvP vs. PvE, or what have you. There are a few that are or were simply bad - the old version of Throwing Specialization springs to mind - but nowadays, those are pretty rare.
If a talent looks useless to you, you probably just aren't thinking of the situations where it'll be useful. But that's OK, you should skip the talents that won't help you in your game. That's the great thing about talents: everybody makes their own choices.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Talents
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Charlie Jul 29th 2009 1:03PM
At least in Mage and Priest trees their used to be.
*Ahem* Improved Wands.
lol.
Eliah Hecht Jul 29th 2009 1:07PM
Hey, that was a godsend for priest leveling. Probably less useful for mages.
Matthew Jul 29th 2009 1:07PM
Yeah, there definitely have been completely worthless talents in the past (although I found Wand Spec handy for levelling my shadow priest).
Any hunter who had Lacerate to look forward to remembers this. But they have gotten, for the most part, better.
Jafari Jul 29th 2009 1:28PM
My favorite was the one that buffed amplify magic and dampen magic, in the same general lackluster area of the mage arcane tree. So much garbage in there before 3.0...
Drow Jul 29th 2009 1:50PM
Heh I used that talent in vanilla!
But yes, there are worthless talents. Any talent that is not PvP or Raid based is worthless. Leveling is so easy and mind numbing you don't need any special talents for that.
Also, in light of that, any talent where one gives you a better return is worthless. Looking at the Hunter tree's, reducing the cost of your instant shots mana is worthless. Some may try to argue, BUT IT KEEPS YOU OUTA VIPER LONGER! Well, with JoW, mana tides, BoW, replenishment, and a quick viper sting/chimera shot combo, I RARELY find myself in viper, unless we are at the end stages of the boss and the fight is longer then 3-4 minutes for some reason.
Sure the talent may sound good in theory, but giving up another talents like Improved Mark when you're the only hunter or say, yes wildly, instead of chimera shot or explosive shot, will hurt way more in the end.
JKWood Jul 29th 2009 2:41PM
You apparently haven't leveled many healers, if you think that leveling is mind-numbingly easy.
Also, I don't always have a half a dozen mana restoration buffs to depends on, so reducing the mana cost of my instants when I'm soloing content is VERY useful to me.
Think globally, act locally, and only speak if you have a clue.
atree496 Jul 29th 2009 3:04PM
Ok, leveling is easy no matter the character. I find it to be so easy, just need right spec.
Friday_Knight Jul 29th 2009 4:08PM
Yeah Wand Specialization was sort of the "test talent" to see how bad someone was. If a mage had wand spec he was bad.
It was a big help at the early levels for leveling my priest. Once you got the point of being able to do your full shadow spell rotations it kind of became superfluous and I specced out of it.
Drow: You're bad. Hunters are the most mana-starved DPS class in the game right now. If you're going entire boss fights without using AoV and you have no mana cost reduction talents I can only imagine the kind of abysmal DPS you do.
JK: True, leveling healer classes can be a pain if you're not specced right. Every class that can heal has a good ass-kicking spec for speedy and efficient leveling; shadow priests, ret pallies, enhancement shamans and feral druids all roflstomp solo content.
Mognet T Jul 29th 2009 6:44PM
Improved Wands was the first thing I thought when reading reading this title. I miss that talent simply because I used to laugh at it.
Don't knock the Amply/Dampen buff talent, I used to use that in the 2's back in the early days of the Arena with a Rogue/Mage team. We both got the improved Dampen...so it took 5 seconds for the Druid/Lock to kill us instead of 4.
Natsumi Jul 30th 2009 12:28AM
*cough* Titan's Grip *cough*
Devlonir Jul 30th 2009 3:15AM
Actually.. Imp Wands in tier 1 of the Mage's Arcane tree would be much more useful then say: Arcane hit for a Fire/Arc specced mage.
I mean.. Vezax does make us wand from time to time :-P
Gothia Jul 30th 2009 6:17AM
Leveling a priest from 1-50 goes like this - Shadow word pain, mind blast, wand wand wand, shadow word pain, mind blast, wand wand wand, oom....oh shoot adds...fear....run run run.
Syggy Jul 30th 2009 9:53AM
Improved wands was 5 talent points for a 25% boost to my base DPS, not counting SW:P or one application of Holy fire, when I was leveling my Holy Priest through Vanilla wow. :)
snowleopard233 Jul 29th 2009 1:12PM
I agree with this. So many shaman seem to feel improved ghost wolf is an essential pvp talent but I hardly use that ability and when I do, fail to see the need for it to be a second much speedier. Maybe it just feels subpar anyway after using travel form on my druid, but I’d much rather use the points for talents like unleashed rage, which everyone seems to want to leave out of their builds
Banthis Jul 29th 2009 1:41PM
Main reason I have it on my leveling shaman is the second point makes it instant cast. Being able to hit it while on the run can make a small, but important, difference.
breaklance Jul 29th 2009 2:49PM
I think imp gw gets a lot of complaints because of its counter-part travel form. However in 3.2 it will be an absolute necessity for pvp with the changes to GW.
Another big thing about imp gw is that if you need to get away and don't have the talent, it can be interupted. It is a nature based spell so interupting it would be catastrophic enough that you can't run away, and can't cast anymore.
But useless talents in the shaman tree....Anticipation, a still old tanking talentl; lava lash, worst instant attack ever; totemic focus, reducing mana cost of totem?; imp reincarn, usefull rarely in pve situations; healing grace, no one has threat problems and all shaman spells get dispelled faster than a rocker can shoot meth;
Moonfaxx Jul 29th 2009 4:25PM
@Break
Any enhance shammy worth his weight in salt knows that Lava Lash isn't a "useless talent." It's part of their standard priority rotation in PvE, and when coupled with relics that proc off of the ability, you may find its priority bumped up even further. In addition, it's a nice PvP ability to use on those pesky plate-wearers; it manifests as fire damage, which armor won't mitigate.
Croe Jul 29th 2009 5:20PM
I use Imp Ghost Wolf a lot. It's even useful in the first area of Ulduar, especially when you want to launch the harpoons in Razorscale.
thebitterfig Jul 29th 2009 5:39PM
what do you mean "the second point in ghost wolf?" it almost sounds like you are presuming all enh shamans should put one point in ghost wolf before moving on up the tree. shamans have to put something somewhere, but it doesn't *have* to be ghost wolf. of course, nothing wrong with ghost wolf, i'm just taking issue with the automatic assumption of putting one point in it. i'm blaming EJ for listing it first in the options of what to get. IGW isn't a bad talent, particularly if you get both points in it (it does seem a 0 or 2 pointer to me), if you use it. if you don't, you'd be better off with almost any other talent in that part of the enhancement tree.
Vargor Jul 29th 2009 5:54PM
@thebitterfig
The original comment by snowleopard233 said that he doesn't see the need for it to be 1 second faster. Since GW is a 2 second cast un-talented, it would be reasonable to assume snowleopard was talking as if there was only 1 point in there.
No points = 2 second
1 point = 1 second
2 points = instant cast