Posts with tag mists-of-pandaria-talent-changes

The beta has been under way now for some time, as have the feedback posts on the official forums. Shaman have had a few major changes to their repertoire, as well as a few more minor ones, but the general feeling from reading the posts made in the forums is that these changes don't go far enough. Shaman, it appears, don't feel like they're getting what they need to be viable, let alone competitive, and the unique nature of a lot of their abilities seems to continue to be as much a hindrance as it is a help.

But arriving like the white knight in medieval-styled dramas, just as the situation feels dire and unsalvageable, is Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street. The shaman feedback post has finally had the equivalent of a Blizzard seal of approval, in the form of a blue post from the bluest of blues.

So what did the big GC address in his post, and what still remains outstanding for beta shaman?

One big complaint that many shaman brought up was glyphs. I recently tweeted fellow WoW Insider writer Joe Perez about this very matter, namely, that shaman glyphs were a mess. They felt either very lackluster or very penalty-heavy. A few patches ago, before the recent changes, I was playing my shaman with two empty glyph slots, because none of the glyphs felt worth using. This is a Bad Thing. A recent patch went some way to repairing this, but with it, a host of new problems appeared, some of which GC addresses after the break.

I had no idea that talents existed in vanilla WoW. I wasn't really stupid -- I just didn't know what talents were or that they were something I should be getting. I expect they were detailed somewhere in the instruction booklet that I didn't bother reading before I started running around Azeroth. I was finally clued in to their existence around level 40 or so on my first character, when a friend asked what spec I was putting points into. My blank "... points?" response garnered an immediate lesson on talent trees.

Talents received a massive overhaul between Wrath and Cataclysm, one that saw a vast majority of talents culled and the trees themselves shortened considerably. It took a little time to get used to the changes, but in the end, the changing of talents wasn't really as huge a deal as I thought it'd be. Choosing talents on a character is still just as easy as it used to be. Don't worry so much about what you pick while you're leveling, and when you reach 85, you'll find plenty of sites online that will tell you the best stuff to grab at max level and why.

Which is sort of the problem, isn't it?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On alternate Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the shadows to bask in your loving adoration.

In case you haven't noticed, the shadowformed Spiritual Guidance is a once-every-other-week thing now. Normally, I'm cool with that. But man, these past two weeks have been killing me. Last week, there were changes. Big changes. Huge changes! And this week -- more huge changes! Groundbreaking changes! Stunning, jaw-dropping changes! Unbelievable ...

Okay, I digress. But there's no exaggeration here. The changes over the past two weeks have been huge. Old friends are making a comeback. New friends are on the way. Shadow priest PvP is changing forever. And shadow priest mastery has been completely overhauled -- twice.

We've got a lot of catching up to do, kids. I'll introduce you to our new friend in just a bit (not that Dawn Moore and Matt Low haven't already let the cat out of the bag), but first, an old friend has been waiting to say "hi." Ladies and gentlemen, make our oldest of friends feel welcome -- a round of applause, please, for Devouring Plague.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem Talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and cohost of the For the Lore and Raid Warning podcasts), shows you how

Well, I finally got my hands on some beta access for Mists of Pandaria, and the first thing I did was make sure good old Lodur got copied over for some healing experimentation. I mean, after all, that's what I live for. Before doing any healing, though, it was time to poke around and see how things have changed.

And boy, have they! Even though I expected it, it was quite jarring to log in to Mists and see that Lodur had a measly 100,000 mana to work with. Any of you out there would probably notice that this is almost half of what we're sporting on our final run-through of Dragon Soul. While it is daunting, it's something that we have to keep in mind will be compensated with mana regen and increasing the mana pool as we level up to 90.

Are you in the beta for Mists of Pandaria yet? Are you fastidiously avoiding spoilers about all beta-related content? As a site that covers Warcraft news, you'll find more often than not that we have a lot of content up on the site that could be considered spoilers. And if you're someone who's avoiding all that spoiler content, it can get a little frustrating to have to keep scrolling past all that information -- or even more frustrating, dealing with the temptation that all of the spoiler information you could ever want to indulge, just behind that click.

Well, that's not what this article is about. It's about the beta, but it's a spoiler-free look at the beta. You'll see some screenshots, but mostly what you'll be reading is what the beta is like. No spoilers of cool story information or anything of that nature here -- just information on Mists, how it looks, how it's shaping up, and what to expect in the event that you do get a beta invite and would like to indulge.