Blizzard has just released its official talent calculators for
Mists of Pandaria, in which the talent system is getting a
major overhaul. Instead of talents being point placement decisions, this new system engages the player in one very important and specific choice every 15 levels. Skills from talents are now learned automatically as a player progresses through his chosen spec. The currently displayed talents are not set in stone and can (and will) change during
Mists' development. If you click on a class' spec, you can also see its skill progression through the life of the character to see what skills you will be gaining. This new system is really, really slick.
Check out Blizzard's official
Mists of Pandaria talent calculators on the
WoW community blog.
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria
is the next expansion, raising the level cap to 90, introducing a brand new talent system, and bringing forth the long-lost pandaren race to both Horde and Alliance. Check out the trailer and follow us for all the latest MoP
news!
Tags: blizzard, mists, mists-of-pandaria, mists-of-pandaria-talents, new-talent-system, pandaria, talent-choices
Filed under: Mists of Pandaria
Nov 23rd 2011 at 12:56AM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
Moooshe Nov 23rd 2011 1:10AM
Do we really need a "calculator" for 6 talents, none of which affects the others?
Bellajtok Nov 23rd 2011 1:16AM
You might have missed the part on the side. It shows the abilities we'll be learning in Mists, which includes useful information like what specs get certain abilities, when we get them, what we might be losing, and (in some cases) the new spell for the class.
Moooshe Nov 23rd 2011 8:10AM
Still not impressed. Not saying I'm not excited about the new expansion, and I will definitely buy it, but still, we don't really need a calculator for that. Throwing all the spells, including 28 (yes, they didn't even remove the Shat/TB duplicates for horde/ally) portals and teleports and all shapes of poly for mages this way doesn't help someone who wants to see what has changed and what's new, since you have to scroll through a long and redundant list.
I see the benefits of the new talent system, but I wish it was less simplistic. I love how my original comment was downrated like I was saying something bad about Apple in an Apple fanboy forum.
Lissanna Nov 23rd 2011 9:00AM
The new lists are for people like me who have to sort through everything. If you don't want to do that, then wait for people like me to pick out the goodies and summarize them for you.
vocenoctum Nov 23rd 2011 4:09PM
You'll probably be grayed out completely soon enough, but yeah, the word "calculator" seems a little mis-applied. The "skill and talent ap" is a nice enough layout though. :)
nutzj98 Nov 29th 2011 6:42AM
Yeah this new system is pretty horrid. It just pushes the game further into easy mode. I don't understand after all of this simplification, why we need any tools. Every 15 levels it's just going to say, "are you sure you want to tank"?
After the introduction of the Panda and now even more dumbing down that the previous two expansions, I'm so scared what trade chat will look like. My 7 year old already destroys PVP with one button. I guess I'll just give my account to her.
Bellajtok Nov 23rd 2011 1:14AM
Ooooh, Shatter is going to be passive for all mages? Nice. That'll be fun in PvP. And Alter Time is SEXY. Plus Druid specializations also look like they're being handled well, and Symbiosis intrigues me.
Overall, I think passive abilities are being handed out well, and I don't think we're losing anything interesting from our talents. The new abilities look interesting, and will definitely challenge our ability to interesting things with them.
radda Nov 23rd 2011 2:20AM
I cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell Alter Time is.
"Alter the fabric of time, causing the caster to return to their current location, health, mana, and conditions after 4 sec."
So...you cast it...and then you end up where you were the way you were...what?
Drakkenfyre Nov 23rd 2011 2:37AM
You cast it. All damage, mana you use, debuffs, and your position get reset to the place where you were when you cast it. If you die, it stops the effect.
It's kind of like rewind time in one of the new 5-man instances.
AngrySlob Nov 23rd 2011 2:35AM
Yes lots of pvp implications, you notice Deep Freeze is listed under all Mage specs too?
Also Arcane looks like its getting its own orb, though I don't really see the point now. Alter Time looks great.
Bellajtok Nov 23rd 2011 2:36AM
It's a lot like the main mechanic in the upcoming Murozond fight. When you cast it, it "remembers" your location, health, mana, and conditions. Four seconds later, as long as you're not dead, you get all of those restored. So you need to make good use of those four seconds. You could avoid evil debuffs if you knew they were coming, or Cauterize to survive anything with full health.
But if "conditions" includes cooldowns, you could use Alter Time, use up to four other cooldowns, and then get them reset after having used them. It'd be like Cold Snap, but requiring very intelligent use. I'm thinking twin Fire Orbs, using Combustion on a target that already has Combustion on them, and some other fun combos. Yeah. It's gonna be a party.
Boozard Nov 23rd 2011 3:02AM
hmmm if it includes CDs, that's a really powerful ability. would that remove satiated debuff too? mages, in theory, could get +4 secs of bloodlust/timewarp. might even be OP. but i really like this spell for mages. it feels so arcane rather than elemental.
trefpoid Nov 23rd 2011 4:02AM
Alter Time sounds crazy!! though I still want Summon Pheonix :( one day we'll be worthy of that spell, I just know it!! They still need to fix the Blast Wave/Dragon Breath/Slow tier.. soooooooo boring!! I want a tier with exciting new abilities too, like Avatar or Ursoc Vortex!! ;O;
Skyrei Nov 23rd 2011 5:05AM
I must admit when i first heard of the new talent system i was very sad.
However, seeing this has got me excited that everything might just be okay :)
What most interests me is that many class abilities that once any spec would have are now becoming certain specs only.
(For example: Only Holy Pallies will have Holy Wrath, only Ret Pallies will have Exorcism)
It will be sad to see some of these abilities go but it will be nice to clean up my bar a bit.
Narayana Nov 23rd 2011 7:23AM
I'm still pretty excited, but I'm surprised by the absence of one spell in particular: Fingers of Frost. Managing FoF is the only thing that makes the Frost Tree engaging and the spell allows Frost Mages to take advantage of our mastery in PVE.
As it stands, it looks like we're back to casting Frostbolt until Brainfreeze procs.
Also, I'm a little disappointed in how mages look like they will play in lower levels. I re-leveled a mage in the Cata beta and I was very pleased with how engaging it was to play a lowbie mage. We had an opener (Frostbolt), a nuke (Fire Ball) and a finisher (Arcane Missiles). All of this is going away and it looks like from level 1-10, a new mage is spamming FFB.
Chokaa Nov 23rd 2011 10:11AM
@Boozard
I think if you use it to try and get more Bloodlust, it will end up hurting you. Cause if you use it before the satiated debuff, you'll only have BL for 4secs. If you use it during BL, well wait....that's a horse of a different color isn't it! Good call sir!
iscalio Nov 23rd 2011 1:23AM
New spells! Symbiosis (Druid), Alter Time (Mage) and Demonic Portal (Warlock). Especially the first two are really interesting.
Azurite Nov 23rd 2011 1:34AM
And Blinding Light for Paladins (Level 87)
Helston Nov 23rd 2011 1:34AM
There's more too, Death Knights are gaining Control Undead at level 81.
evilmousse Nov 23rd 2011 1:28AM
please tell me the rogue talents are just placeholders, and we're not losing our current top-talent moves like vendetta until lvl90, and not gaining anything new and interesting. my 70 weeps at losing shadow dance, having to choose between preparation and shadowstep, and losing the thrown weapon slot =(. it was bad enough when my 60 hunter lost his t-rex last expansion, this is three times as bad.