BlizzCon 2009: Mastery system and talent trees
by Michael Sacco 
Aug 22nd 2009 at 6:30PM
Following their comments during yesterday's Class/Items/Professions panel, the Game Systems team explained the mysterious "mastery" system in the Systems panel today.
Looking at talent trees for all classes, the Systems team felt that players were spending too many points on things like flat damage or healing boosts; talents like Cruelty or Fire and Brimstone are uninteresting but necessary for players due to the bonuses they provide. On top of that, talent trees are bloated with all kinds of talents that are trying to do three things at once, which makes for confusion among players who might not be at the top of the min-maxing game.
What the Systems team wanted to do was make it possible for players to only use their points on "fun" talents -- ones like Body and Soul, Lightning Overload, or Juggernaut -- and make the passive bonuses that used to be in talents your reward for investing points into a tree.
Examples were given for Rogues. A Combat Rogue might see his Mastery bonuses include passive increases to melee damage, hit chance, and armor penetration as he moves down the tree, whereas a Subtlety Rogue might see increases to melee damage, melee haste, and energy regen.
But how does the new Mastery stat tie into this? Ghostcrawler says that the Mastery stat on gear will increase the bonuses you receive from the tree into which you've invested the most talent points. It'll also have other passive bonuses depending on your class and spec -- for example, Mastery will lower the cooldowns on Ret paladin abilities.
This seems like a fantastic change for everyone, and it makes me incredibly excited to think about the fun and interesting talents that'll replace my myriad of spell damage boosting talents. Can't wait for the beta!
BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest! 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Street Justice Aug 22nd 2009 6:35PM
This expansion just keeps on getting juicier and juicier, everything has so far impressed me massively, aside from the stat changes.
Otome Aug 22nd 2009 6:36PM
Interesting. There's quite a few talents for my Rogue I'd love to take, but Vanish doesn't work on escaping the jeering and jokes that would result, so I don't.
Nick Aug 22nd 2009 6:37PM
Sweet! But Haste should have been kept, attacking hella fast can be really useful.
Angus Aug 22nd 2009 7:24PM
My guess is Flurry, Slice and Dice and Bloodlust will all remain. If anything this allows them to change them up to do better.
Valt Aug 22nd 2009 9:24PM
"My guess is Flurry, Slice and Dice and Bloodlust will all remain."
They better. It wouldn't really make sense if Bloodlust would "increases your energy/rage/focus/runic/rage regen by 30%" eh?
Mort Aug 23rd 2009 5:00AM
@Valt
Actually, as a Feral a 30% energy regen increase would benefit me more than the haste it currently gives. More energy = more Shreds = more 20k Ferocious Bite crits during burn phases = moar happy cat durids
slyman.is.god Aug 22nd 2009 6:45PM
this is gonna rock so hard :D
Thander Aug 22nd 2009 6:48PM
This sounds pretty neat. For once, you can actually just have fun placing talents around. You don't have to worry if you will have enough DPS or not.
I'd like to see more details though. Is it just based on how many points in the tree? Each point = +1% damage, class specific stat #1 +X, class specific stat #2 +Y?
devlin Aug 22nd 2009 6:48PM
I see they (re)moved Find Weakness in Assassination tree. Could this mean rogues will not be dead last in the Cataclysm revamp?
Naithin Aug 22nd 2009 6:56PM
This isn't going to be very friendly I don't think to specs that spend points across the three trees of their class, but thinking about it, quite often this was done for the 'passive' effects, taking warrior as example.. Parry from Arms, Cruelty from Fury, etc, for a tank. So if those passives go away, perhaps some of the reason for spreading across the trees will be reduced anyway.
Not too sure what I think about that, but this is still very early days yet. Overall, I am quite in love with the concept, but will reserve final judgement til it's.. well.. final. :)
Thander Aug 22nd 2009 7:00PM
That was only a problem because of imbalanced talent trees. The ideal situation according to Blizzard is 51 points in your main tree and 20 points in a offspec tree of your choosing. It didn't work this way because for various reasons. With the mastery system Blizzard might have a chance of accomplishing this.
Wolftech Aug 22nd 2009 7:02PM
You wouldnt think so, but remember, they are pulling all the passive stat bonuses out of the talent trees, so there is less of an incentive to take some of those trees.
zombiesauridae Aug 22nd 2009 7:07PM
It's nice to see them lean more and more towards the specs catering towards playstyles and not "this does the most dps" or "this is the best healing".
WoW has come a long way from the original one role, one viable spec per class in the days of old vanilla WoW.
Snuzzle Aug 22nd 2009 10:24PM
Except, here's the thing: There will always be people who crunch the math and numbers and say "This spec is the best DPS" or "This spec provides the most efficient healing". Not that Blizz should cater to that, but they will always be there, no matter what.
Still, I am looking forward to the new toys we will get in our trees. There's an awful lot of "Increases x stat by x%" or "give your x spell a chance to hit harder/last longer/etc".
alex Aug 23rd 2009 2:03AM
@snuzzle,
You're totally right, and it's very likely there will still be "best" builds for particular tasks. However, in terms of output (damage, healing, etc.) there will now be far more VIABLE specs.
For example, as a rogue right now you pretty much HAVE to take certain points to be competitive. Even as little as a 5 point alteration from cookie-cutter build will be a substantial DPS decrease (talking PvE of course, PvP is always more flexible). With damage tied to trees rather than talent points, there will - hopefully - be a much greater variety of what's acceptable to bring to a raid. Can't wait.
Tyler Ransom Aug 22nd 2009 7:34PM
This is how they are going to keep prot pallies from outhealing holy pallies etc. Without holy mastery the prot pally will never heal competetively. Which is how its supposed to be.
McRaider Aug 22nd 2009 8:12PM
Also the 60% str => SP change does this VERY effectively. I noticed, that I have about 250 str in holygear, so the drop from the 30% stam is massive.
In other words, they have mostly solved the problem. Now they're just making sure it stays like that.
Lemons Aug 22nd 2009 8:25PM
This is great actually, but with so much of talent trees being "increases x spell's damage by y percent" I'm wondering how they're going to replace them all with only "fun" talents.
Rubitard Aug 22nd 2009 8:36PM
This'll sound a bit pedantic at best and come across as a troll-like answer at worst, but I honestly think the reason they're focusing on "fun" talents is the same reason many of these changes are being made to WoW as we know it: It's a game. It's supposed to be fun. One can successfully argue that "fun" is something which can be had in different ways with WoW. Theorycrafting, as an example, has benefitted from having a myriad of stats to number-crunch into a wonderful geeky sense of purpose. However, overall simplifications, and additions of new, yet easily understood bits (like talent tree mastery) will cater to the broader WoW-playing audience. I still think theorycrafters will still have enough grist for their mills, but for players such as myself, I welcome bringing a bit more "fun" into the talents and removing some of the "well, gotta have it or else" pressure.
Dahras Aug 23rd 2009 2:08AM
I have to agree with you lemons... the vast majority of some talent trees are flat % boosts. They will have to do a lot of work to keep many tree's from just being gutted, and the huge amount of change may lead to balance issues.
Of course they will work the balance kinks out over time, and the improvement of the talent system is certainly worth it, but there will definitely be a cost, and blizzard could still screw it all up pretty badly.