We've just updated our Mists of Pandaria Talent Calculator to reflect many of the most recent changes and renovations currently being made to the next expansion of World of Warcraft.

We'd like to discuss these and other changes to talents and specializations in this thread. Here are a couple of thoughts to start with:

• For shaman and hunters, we still have a ways to go with the revamp of talents, and this latest calculator doesn't have some of the changes that we're currently working on.
• If you don't see a favorite spell in the talent list, there is a good chance it is something you get automatically for choosing a particular spec. For example, all Fury warriors learn Raging Blow without having to choose it as a talent. All Discipline priests know Divine Aegis. Chances were almost certain that you were going to choose those anyway so we just gave them to you.
• If you don't see a favorite spell or mechanic as a class ability, spec ability or talent, then there is a good chance it is becoming a glyph. Examples include Atonement (priest), Gag Order (Warrior), Rude Interruption (Warrior), and the Acts of Sacrifice Cleanse component (Paladin).

Feel free to have a look at the updated calculator, and then discuss it there!

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Question: Why did attacks using % weapon damage drop so much?

Answer: We are in the process of recalculating the way damage is dealt. Individual weapon damage is going up by the same proportion in order to keep DPS at level 85 about the same. This should ensure that, at lower levels, these abilities aren't overpowered.

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Question: Why doesn't every spec get a passive ability at level 10?

Answer: Some specs no longer need them. For example, Fire mages don't get bonus damage with Fire spells – they just have mostly Fire spells to cast. Some hybrids still need passives to differentiate their DPS, healing, and tanking trees. Furthermore, we can always add more if the need arises.

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Soon.

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Crusader Strike and Hammer of the Righteous still share a cooldown, with a base of 4.5 seconds for both specs. Sanctity of Battle can lower this cooldown for Retribution.

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Some warlock clarifications for you:

• Archimonde's Vengeance has a 1 minute cooldown.
• Grimoire of Sacrifice grants a 30% boost for 15 sec, which drops to 15% for the remaining duration.
• Blood Fear replaces Fear.
• Soul Link replaces Health Funnel.
• Harvest Life does not hit polymorphed targets.
• Demon Soul is not listed at this time, but this is just an error in the calculator.

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Question: Why didn't the priest tree change?
Answer: We are still in development. It is a challenge, when giving players a sneak peak at work in progress, to decide when to release what we have versus waiting to accumulate even more changes.

Q: Do Discipline priests have Prayer of Healing or not?
A: Our current design direction is this: Holy does AE healing with Prayer of Healing, and Discipline heals with (a much more powerful than today) Holy Nova. Divine Aegis would work with Holy Nova under this model. However, please see the question above. The priest tree is still in heavy development.

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We are iterating a lot on tank rotations right now. We want rage (and all tank resources) to be something players actually use for mitigation, because we think that will be more fun than having a resource that gets ignored. Under this model, Protection warriors can't have many DPS abilities that cost rage, because rage will be too valuable for Shield Block and Shield Barrier on fights where survival is a challenge. An ability with no resource cost needs some kind of cooldown or it will just be macro'ed and / or spammed, which isn't a lot of fun.

Prot warriors have a lot of abilities to manage: Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Thunder Clap, Shield Block and so on, as well as several emergency buttons to handle situations such as streaming adds. We're okay with melee specs having an occasional free GCD, as long as it doesn't happen with frustrating regularity.

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The death knight abilities Death Siphon, Soul Reaper, and Necrotic Strike cost 1 Death Rune. They are not free.

The calculator is not currently displaying that cost type (properly).

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