Posts with tag TalentTree

Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration will show you how, brought to you by Joe Perez, otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and the For The Lore podcast.

Back at the beginning of April, we were treated to the Cataclysm preview for all of the classes. Many people were excited, some were disappointed, but everyone had news to digest. This past week has seen the Cataclysm friends and family alpha start and since then, we have seen a plethora of leaks: everything from images of the changes to old zones and new instances up to some data-mined information about female worgen. Needless to say, it has been a pretty busy week.

This last week has also seen a lot of discussion about the leaked talent trees as they are in the alpha now. I thought now would be a good time to take a break from boss talks to talk about what we know so far about the shaman talent trees and maybe find out your opinions on them as well.

The information in the link above is leaked and is in no way official. If you are waiting for an official release or don't want to see any potential spoilers, don't click the link. Otherwise let us take a look at some of the potential changes.

The Lich King is coming to World of Warcraft -- and with him ten more levels, ten more talent points, and (we presume) three additional tiers of talents for every tree. This means the question on the mind of many a theorycrafter is what these talents might be. And while it's been discussed thoroughly on the forums, today I'm asking you. What sorts of talents do you want to see available to your class for 51 talent points? And what sorts of talents do you expect Blizzard to implement?

The last time we spoke, Arcane was the name of the game. Dealing with each of the types of mages is a challenge for me, seeing as how I play a blended spec myself. But more than simply talking about how one might considering speccing your mage (we'll get to that later) this series of posts is a discussion of the nature of the three types of mages themselves.

For a long while I was a Frost Mage, and I capitalize the term because it seemed like such a stiff, formal affair whenever I talked about my talents. All my damage was built into the frost spells on my bar, and I barely touched any of the others. While not the most imaginative when it comes to instance groups, the Frost Mage was definitely strong in the PvE realm of the game. Many of the talents available in the Frost tree include chill effects, those effects designed to slow your enemy. This makes this particular spec excellent for soloing, since you are able to freeze your enemies in place for longer periods of time with Improved Frost Nova, slow vast armies with Improved Blizzard, and Crit your way to victory with Shatter.

Blizzard has updated the druid and rogue talent calculators to reflect the changes in today's patch.

To recap talent changes for each class from earlier today:

Druids:

• "Feline Swiftness" has been renamed "Feral Swiftness". The dodge % increase now also applies to Bear and Dire Bear Forms.
• "Improved Moonfire" has been reduced to 2 ranks, for a 5/10% bonus.
• "Insect Swarm" has had its damage on all ranks increased. The mana cost of ranks 1 and 3 has been increased. The mana cost of ranks 4,5 and 6 has been decreased.
• "Nurturing Instinct" now grants its benefit at all times, but the bonus has been reduced to 25/50% of Strength.
• "Improved Starfire" has been renamed to "Celestial Focus" and now also increases the chance to resist casting pushback when casting Wrath by 25/50/70%.
• "Blood Frenzy" benefits have merged with "Primal Fury".
• "Improved Leader of the Pack" has been reduced to 2 ranks for 2/4% total health healed.

Rogues:

• "Evasion" (Rank 2) now reduces the chance that ranged attacks will hit the Rogue by 25%, reduced from 50%. It is now available at level 50.
• The "Cloak of Shadows" cooldown has been reduced to 1 min, from 2 min. Now a trainable ability at level 66.
• "Shadowstep" (New Subtlety Talent) attempts to step through the shadows and reappear behind your enemy. Your next "Ambush", "Backstab" or "Garrote" ability is increased by 20% and lasts 10 sec. This is only usable while stealthed.
• "Premeditation" (Subtlety Talent) has had its range increased to 30 yards.
• "Preparation" now only resets the cooldown of the "Evasion", "Sprint", "Vanish", "Cold Blood", "Adrenaline Rush" and "Premeditation" abilities.
• Each rank of "Weapon Expertise"now provides 5 weapon skill.
• "Surprise Attacks" now increases the damage from "Sinister Strike", "Backstab", "Shiv" and "Gouge" by 10% instead of 8%.

You can find the rogue talents here and the druid talents here.

Spend your points wisely, and let me know how I should spec my rogue now that things have changed :)

Well, I tend to agree with the sentiment expressed by this thread on the beta forums, which praises the 1 copper respecs currently available to beta players. Of course, not everyone agrees -- there are also those who side with Blizzard's standing opinion on the matter, which states that your talent spec shouldn't be a casual decision, and ought to mean something. And perhaps poster Warrenders hits the nail on the head when he explains that:

It would invalidate talent choices and specs as everyone can be any spec they want any time they wanted. Why not just make all talents baseline skills and be done with it then?

But regardless of your opinion on the issue, there is some excellent discussion -- from both sides of the fence -- here.

More interesting beta changes popping up this weekend -- Paladinsucks has brought to my attention some interesting paladin changes. Good news first -- Protection buffs! In addition to increasing the thread provided by Righteous Fury, Improved Righteous Fury now also reduces damage taken by 2/4/6% while active. And in addition to reducing the cooldown of Divine Shield, Sacred Duty also increases overall stamina by 3/6%. Nice!

However, one can't live on buffs alone... and these changes come with nerfs to the Retribution tree (previously reported, but just now going live in the beta). Crusader Strike's cooldown is once again 10 seconds and Vengeance once again provides only a 10% bonus to your physical and holy damage.

Paladins who want to be tanks are thrilled, while paladins who want to do damage or PvP are discouraged. (Well, that's putting it mildly, isn't it?)

Update: Clarified that the Retribution tree changes/nerfs had been announced, but were only now implemented.

[Thanks, Lavis!]

The 41-point talent for rogues in the subtlety tree, Cloak of Shadows, never really impressed me. However, while I can't see myself spending that many talent points for it, I can certainly see its uses, and I know I'll be using it frequently if the change in the Burning Crusade beta -- making it a trainable skill -- makes it to the live realms. And before you think it's too good to be true and start pointing out that Cloak of Shadows is still listed as the 41-point talent in the official talent calculator, you should know that Tseric seems to have confirmed the change -- or at least, in his posted response to the thread about the change, he doesn't deny it -- only talks about reasons for making trainable high level talents.

Of course, if the 41-point talent is trainable, that leaves the question of what the new talent might be -- and I believe the above screenshot is legitimate. The Shadowstep ability is getting too much discussion on the beta forums for it to have been a fabrication by a single person.

They just keep coming. Today's changes focus on the shaman, with several tweaks for their elemental and enhancement trees. I don't find these changes awe-inspiring, but they aren't bad news, either.

• Parry - Renamed Spirit Weapons. Now "Gives a chance to parry enemy melee attacks and reduces the threat generated by your melee attacks by 15%."
• Mental Quickness - Moved to Unleashed Rage position.
• Unleashed Rage - Moved to Dual Wield Specialization position.
• Dual Wield Specialization - Moved to Mental Quickness position, reduced to 3 ranks for 2/4/6% hit chance. Still requires Dual Wield.
• Totem of Wrath - Now "...increases the chance to hit and critically hit with spells by 3% to all..."
• Elemental Precision - Now "Increases your chance to hit with Fire, Frost and Nature spells by 1/2/3% and reduces the threat caused by Fire, Frost and Nature spells by 4/7/10%."

In today's round of changes we seem to have... I'm sorry, but I can think of no better way to phrase it... nerfs. Paladins, mages, and warlocks have all gotten some talent tweaks that reduce their power. I don't think the warlock change was uncalled for (that talent was beyond belief in its previous form), and can't say much for the rest. Your thoughts?

Paladin

• Vengeance - Increases damage by 2/4/6/8/10%, reduced from 3/6/9/12/15%
• Crusader Strike - Cooldown increased to 10 sec., from 6 sec. Should now have new icon.

Mage

• Molten Fury - Rank 3 removed. Ranks 1 and 2 unchanged.
• Elemental Precision - Changed to "Reduces the mana cost and chance targets resist your Frost and Fire spells by 1/2/3%."
• Empowered Fireball - Reduced to 3% per rank from 4%

Warlock

• Unholy Power - Reverted to "Increases the damage done by your Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter, and Felguard's melee attacks by 4/8/12/16/20%." It no longer increases Shadow and Fire damage.

I'm not sure how I missed out on these recent talent changes when they were posted, but here they are nevertheless. Blizzard is really twisting my arm here to try to get me back to playing a warlock again, but we also have a paladin and priest change.

Warlock

• Demonic Sacrifice - Felguard effect now restores 2% mana every 6 sec. (changed from 2% every 4 sec.) in addition to the 10% damage increase.
• Master Demonologist - Felguard effect tooltip corrected to increase damage by 1/2/3/4/5% and resistances by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 per level.
• Unholy Power - Now also "...increases all Shadow and Fire damage you cause by 1/2/3/4/5%."
  

Paladin

• Seal of Blood - Additional weapon damage increased to 40%, from 30%.

Priest

• Vampiric Touch - Rank 3 now costs 425 mana.

When I saw the first-released Burning Crusade talents, I was very impressed. Looking from a healer's perspective, I envied the paladin's new holy tree (and determined to roll a Horde paladin when the expansion arrived). And the warlock changes (I have a retired level 60 warlock) made me want to dust off my warlock and start raiding with it again. So I had high expectations -- and the initial talent release disappointed me.

However, Blizzard has more recently released some revisions to the priest talent trees which are somewhat more interesting, and at least make me stop to think before deciding I should immediately reroll. (I have already reserved the character name "Rerolled" on my realm for my paladin-to-be, just in case.) Read on for talent-by-talent impressions...

We actually had this confirmed the other day, but I didn't put it up because I thought it was already obvious. Because people are still asking on the forums, yes: everyone (all classes) will be getting a free respec when the expansion releases, whether you choose to purchase the expansion or not.

Which is probably good news if you're planning to respec near the end of this year, and didn't want to spend the 5g. But as I said, with all the new talents coming out, rumored or otherwise, how could you not respec? It is pretty momentous that they're handing them out across the board-- I don't recall Blizzard ever having done that before. But considering how much they're changing everything, it's only the right thing to do.

A better question might be this: What will the world of Azeroth be like for the week after the expansion, when everyone comes back to find new and varied talents, and almost everyone has to L2P again? Will free respecs make us all noobs again, or will players be more than ready to jump in and use what they've been given like pros?

Whether this is legitimate or no, we may not know until there's an official announcement. However, this image has made its way out onto the net, displaying all three rogue trees and the tooltips for new talents. The talents don't look terribly unreasonable, and they contain some interesting things (and by "interesting" I mean "things I've never seen players discuss or ask for") that we've seen in other rumors - specifically the talent that increases the effect of healing on the player. But you'll have to decide for yourself if you think these are for real. A list of talents shown in the screenshot continues below.

Several modifications have been made to the existing shaman review.  The talent calculator should already be updated with these changes.  So what does everyone think of the following new changes?

• Totemic Focus: Now reduces mana cost of totems by  5 to 25% (was 3 to 15%).
• Elemental Devastation: Moved down to tier 3 - swapped with Storm Reach.
• Storm Reach: Moved up to tier 4- swapped with Elemental Devastation.
• Totemic Mastery: Now increases totem range by 10 yards (was 5 yards), but will not stack with the 3-piece Earthfury bonus.

...and in a very good way.  Changes include the following:

Arcane Tree
Arcane Subtlety: Now a 2-point talent that reduces your target's resistances to all your spells by 5/10 and threat caused by your arcane spells by 20/40%.
Wand Specialization: Now only a 2-point talent.
Magic Absorption: New 5-point, tier 2 ability.  When you resist a spell, you regain 1/2/3/4/5% of your maximum mana and increases your resistances by 2/4/6/8/10.
Improved Arcane Explosion: Now a 3-point ability that increases the critical chance of Arcane Explosion by 2/4/6%.

Fire Tree
Burning Soul: Now adds threat reduction as well as prevents you from loosing casting time by taking damage.  Threat reduced by 15/30%.
Improved Scorch: The fire vulnerability DoT has been improved to 3% each, and still stacks 5 times (for a total of 15% increased fire vulnerability).

Frost Tree
Frost Warding: Moved to tier 1.
Elemental Focus: New 3-point tier 1 talent that increases your chance to hit with fire and frost spells by 2/4/6%.
Improved Frost Nova: Moved to tier 2.
Permafrost: Moved to tier 2.
Frost Channeling: In addition to the mana cost reduction, this talent now also reduces threat caused by frost spells by 10/20/30%.
Shatter: The pre-requisite for this talent is now Improved Frost Nova rather than Frostbite.
Winter's Chill: Changed functionality.  Now causes a debuff that increases frost crit chance by 2%.  20/40/60/80/100% chance to apply the debuff.
Ice Barrier: Now receives 10% of the benefit of +frost damage gear and can stack with a priest's Power Word: Shield.