Totem Talk: Mists of Pandaria talent calculator for restoration shamans
by Joe Perez 
Nov 29th 2011 at 5:00PM
BlizzCon 2011 was an exciting time with a lot of announcements for every class and for the state of the game in general. If you're a regular reader of the column (and I hope you are), you'll remember that we talked a little bit about the proposed talent system changes before and what it meant for restoration shaman.
Well, since then, the official talent calculator for Mists of Pandaria have been released on the official World of Warcraft site. With it, there are a few surprises. It has caused quite a stir throughout the community, and many of the bloggers out there have been sharing their thoughts on the new calculator and what it means for the future of their classes and specs. So today that's exactly what I'm going to do.
We've talked about this before, but it bears repeating. Cataclysm brought about a pretty revolutionary (and at the time controversial) change to the talent system by breaking it down from what we knew for years to the 31-point talent system we have today. It allowed for specialization locking a player into a certain talent tree, eliminating hybrid talent builds, but in exchange giving players some key abilities as perks. It was the first step in streamlining the talent system.
Even then though, it wasn't quite what the talent system was meant to be. The developers at Blizzard had stated they wanted talents to be fun and give your character flavor. They were supposed to be more flexible and give you perks without becoming mandatory, but as we all know, your talent choices have a divine impact on how you heal. For example, skip Nature's Swiftness, and you'll suffer for it at some point.
Whole new philosophy
Moving into MoP, the idea is to give your talents a more flexible feel. First of all, you can swap them out for other talents whenever you're not in combat, or at least that's the plan. That right there gives you a lot more flexibility than you have right now, when you have to run to a trainer whenever you want to swap your talents around.
Also, instead of having separate trees for your talents, after you pick your specialization, you then get to pick from a pool of three talents every 15 levels. This means you can have a healer with something that isn't necessarily directly related to healing. They are divided into six sets of talents, and each set has a theme to it. Movement and survivability are two that come to mind.
The other thing to note is that the new talent system is not supposed to be full of choices that define your class or are absolutely necessary to you doing your chosen job. Instead, each tier offers different utility perks for your character that you can utilize. While right now a lot of talents or perks seem pretty rough (and in some cases downright useless for some classes), we have a long way to go before they become set in stone. Remember, the game isn't even at the beta phase yet. We're just getting a lot more transparency in the design process than we've ever really gotten before.
The change really has caused quite a stir, and a lot of people are afraid of the new talent system or downright hate it already. Matt Low and I actually had a pretty long and heated debate about the new system. He couldn't understand why, for the most part, the level 90 talents for most classes seemed rather weak on the power scale. I argued that the entire point of the new system was to allow you choices that gave your character a little flavor without being mandatory or breaking the scales at this point.
Take a look at the shaman top tier 90 talents for a great example of this. Totemic Projection relocated your active totems to a specified location. I'm slightly less jazzed about this talent than I was a few weeks ago because of that word "active" in the description. What it means is that you can relocate your totems that are already out to a new location, making it not as exciting at just launching a Spirit Link Totem where you want it to go. Totemic Restoration gives you a reduction in the cooldown of your totems if they are prematurely killed or removed from action. While that's fine and dandy, when some of our totems have 6-second or 2-minute duration and come stacked with a cooldown of a few minutes; that extra second or two doesn't really seem like it would make that much of a difference.
Elemental Harmony seems cool, allowing you to have multiple totems of the same school out at a time. You could have Healing Tide Totem, Healing Stream Totem and Mana Tide Totem all out at the same time. The talent excluded fire totems from the effects, and it sounds pretty cool -- but then you have to think about the streamlining of totems over the last year and change. While new totems are being added, this talent isn't really game-breaking, but it does add a fun flavor to your shaman. Sure, some talents will be better for some encounters or playstyles, but it's less about having the optimum talent choices and more about you choosing how you want to play your character.
New ability spread
Another thing of note with the new talent calculator is that after you pick your specialization, your skills and spells show up on a list showing what level you get which ability. This has probably caused the most stir among players. It's pretty cool that it shows you what abilities you get at what level, but also you get to see where some of those talents are getting folded into just being class abilities you gain as you level up. Ancestral Focus being given to players at level 1 and Healing Wave not becoming available until level 20 are just examples of how things are starting to shape up.
Not only does it tell you the level you get the spell or ability, it tells you if it's a passive ability, something you get from your spec or something you just get from being that class. It also lets you filter it out by each of those options. It was a nice surprise to log into the official calculator and to see that in addition to just having our talents, but it's something we shouldn't be freaking out about ... at least not quite yet.
Personally, I don't think that aspect of it is quite finalized yet. First of all, the different healing specs abilities seem pretty randomized as far as to what level they get their healing spells. I think that's something we'll see become a lot more normalized before this goes live. Secondly, we have a long time before the game even goes into the beta phase, which means that things will change. Pile that on top of the fact that this is a complete overhaul of the system we have today, and you can bet dollars to doughnuts it's going to be tweaked and looked at with a certain scrutiny before it graces live servers.
So what do you think of the new talent calculator? Do you like how it is laid out? What do you think of our new talents and the talent system? What do you think about how the abilities will be laid out for us?
Totem Talk: Restoration lets you Ask a Shaman about the tricks of the trade. We'll introduce you to the very latest pre-raid gear and show you how to manage your cooldowns. Happy healing, and may your mana be plentiful!
Filed under: Shaman, (Shaman) Totem Talk
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
PeeWee Nov 29th 2011 5:09PM
What I'll miss the most is the feeling of actual progress when you level. They already removed the spell ranks, and now they're removing the talent points. And with this system it'll be even less.
PeeWee Nov 29th 2011 5:11PM
WTB edit button....
"They already removed the spell ranks, then they removed half the talent points. And with this system it'll be even less."
Nyold Nov 29th 2011 6:09PM
You still progress when you level. Your fireball will hit harder every time you level up, albeit just slightly harder. In the previous system (with spell ranks): your fireball suddenly hits way harder every 10 levels or so.
As for getting talent points, every few levels you will gain abilities that are core to the class too, but not through the talent system. If you are a fire mage, then you will get the fire-defining abilities and spells that are central to fire rotations as you level up, not all at once. You still get that sense of progression.
lividmonkey Nov 29th 2011 6:52PM
I get what PeeWee is saying. When you leveled in vanilla, it felt like an accomplishment. You had to go and buy new spell ranks and place your talent points. Talent points were semi-permanent. You had to deliberate over what you were going to place. If you didn't buy your new spell ranks, you definitely felt underpowered until you did so. There's no feeling of progress now. It all ramps itself up. So, you don't really feel more powerful at 60 than you did at 45 because everything ramped up for you and so are the mobs you face. I'm glad SWTOR copied the tree system (along with the sense of permanency since you cannot change your advanced class once you choose it) from WoW and forces you to purchase spell updates. It brings that old feel back. It makes me feel warm and cozy and that's another huge draw to that game over old reliable, here.
Joe Perez Nov 30th 2011 10:00AM
@lividmonkey that's actually one of the things I miss most about WoW's vanilla days, being forced into the world to find your trainer when you level, or really just being forced out of the one city. Not that I don't still love the game, but it's become a game of portals. You sit in the major hub and instead of traveling to the new zone/instance you are ported there, or you can go to your handy-dandy portal island and hope through time and space. When you do need to go see a trainer, there's now a lot of them to choose from in the major city hub of your choice. With just giving us the spells without having to travel back to the cities I feel it's missing out on a certain flavor that was cool. Call me sentimental but I loved having to scrounge for where the hell the shaman trainers were in BC.
Werther Nov 29th 2011 5:22PM
As a raider many of these looks like pvp talents. Looks like resto shamans will end up with 99% the same stuff as we had last expansion.
Zato Nov 29th 2011 5:43PM
I'm officially MEH on the Shaman talents. Most of the classes are getting really cool groundbreaking things... we get to move our totems? I agree, being able to launch them, like the hunter trap ability would be nice, especially for spirit link.
iadamson Nov 29th 2011 7:08PM
If there is no totem launcher, id hope that blizz will atleast change spirit link from a totem spell to a spell like healing rain in which you chose where it goes... Even in the beta back in wrath it wasn't a totem
..
Joe Perez Nov 30th 2011 9:55AM
I still don't think that it's too much to ask for someone to give us a giant cannon that pops out of our backs and launches a totem with such force that our enemies tremble from the impact.
iadamson Nov 30th 2011 2:43PM
I think it creates a complex ui, you need one for when u just want to drop them near you, and another for 'launching' them. I also think Blizz doesn't want some totems to have the ability to launch because of some pvp implications..launching earthgrab etc. I just hope Spirit Link isn't one of those totems...
kaminari Nov 29th 2011 6:22PM
are we losing our insta wolf?
Boobah Nov 29th 2011 6:41PM
That's what it looks like right now.
But before you panic, remember that this is way, way early and also incredibly incomplete. Make sure (respectfully, if you please) that Blizzard knows instant Ghost Wolf is something you consider important to the class.
I suspect that since it isn't a talent, that we're fairly likely to end up with it as part of the base spell, since just about everybody took it this past expansion.
kaminari Nov 30th 2011 12:04AM
yeah, I know it's incomplete so I'm not panicking yet =P.
I just really like my insta wolf and I think they said it would be base line, so I wanted to know if I missed a blue clarifying it =).
Joe Perez Nov 30th 2011 9:54AM
At BlizzCon 2011, GC mentioned Ghost Wolf just becoming instant for all shaman as a base part of the spell. It was specifically mentioned that for the most part, all three spec of shaman made it a point to get the talent and that with the increased emphasis on movement it just seemed right. So it's not going away, it's just going to be part of the base spell in MoP.
Drakkenfyre Nov 29th 2011 6:44PM
"This means you can have a healer with something that isn't necessarily directly related to healing"
That's going to be kind of hard since picking a spec will remove most of the abilities not directly related to that spec.
You will never be able to heal as Elemental, or DPS worth a crap as Resto.
Also, changing talents requires a dust of disappearance. It isn't free to swap them.
T Nov 29th 2011 6:52PM
I think the 10% magic reduction to healing rain (Fortifying waters) looks pretty interesting. Especially with how much AoE magic damage they put in the game.
iadamson Nov 29th 2011 6:54PM
I would like to see our current Cleansing Waters & Blessing of eternals talents worked into spells. They are currently missing. Id also like to point out we can only remove curses & magic while druids can do that plus poison.
The Shaman currently have no new spells... I'm hoping its to come... personally I want elementals removed from totems and function like the spirit wolves... maybe change the Earth Elemental into a healing one... mini earth shields on various targets that have an absorb effect.
Joe Perez Nov 30th 2011 9:52AM
That's actually something I thought would be quite nice to have a new elemental to do. Earth Elemental is still kinda useful as an escape when you're soloing and I've used him to finish a boss in a 5-man when a tank has an ... unfortunate accident, but having a defensive elemental would be super awesome.
Q Nov 30th 2011 1:40PM
I dont see anything about the ancestral healing-the passive talent that now increases our target of healing's health, i already like that and would hate to see it removed in the next expansion, also healing stream totem,mana spring totem, and the melee and spell haste totem will be removed right? they said they are getting rid of buff totems so no more haste,better mana regen, or additional healing help. i think they are f'ing up on the shamans and the whole totem change.
iadamson Nov 30th 2011 6:04PM
Take the level 75 tier and work those abilities into respective specs. Drop the lvl 90 tier to the blank 75 tier. Add some new ballin spells like I duno elemental pets choose between fire, earth and air...
Or... some cool utility totems with 3 min cooldowns and rather short durations... that could prove rather useful in specific situations... lol jk