Posts with tag mop-talents

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we'll be discussing a few of the more recent additions and tweaks to our class on the Mists of Pandaria beta. Some of them are awesome. Some of them are silly. And some of them are porcupines.

You see that thing up there in the picture? That tiny little legless flaming elemental from vanilla WoW? That's one of our three new familiars. That's right: familiars.

I've actively campaigned for mage familiars in the past, even as far back as this crusty old post from 2008, in which I also wished for more portals, a Blink spell that actually worked, and a rumored new ability called Mirror Image, which I believed would prove to be a combination of a bacon double cheeseburger, the second coming of Christ, and a double rainbow out of a leprechaun's butt. So young! So naive.

I always imagined my mage running around with a tiny furry minion, maybe mouse with glowing eyes, or an ominous crow, possibly animated by Don Bluth, that would do my bidding and tell me which cottage in the forest Princess Aurora was hiding in. I imagined a wizardly pet that would be always by my mage's side, part of the persona, perhaps conferring a passive buff or something.

Well that isn't quite what we're getting here.

Throughout Cataclysm, the arcane spec has been a strange beast. At the beginning of the expansion, it was solidly the worst mage spec due to the absurdly high cost of Arcane Blast. After some quick patch 4.1 fixes, it became our top-performing spec, especially if we had access to Shard of Woe. From that point on, arcane was a source of potent damage. While fire has become the vogue spec for Dragon Soul, arcane still is a very viable and desirable spec. Going forward into Mists of Pandaria, that all could change ... or the spec could be made even better.

Part of the source of arcane's potency this expansion has been due to how incredibly well the spec scales with intellect. While intellect provides the same spellpower to arcane mages that it does to every other caster, arcane mages' Mana Adept mastery makes the mana increase from intellect critical. Arcane Blast, the pivotal spell in arcane's rotation, has a static mana cost that is only based on mage base mana and not their mana after gear. Because of this, the more intellect you have means the more Arcane Blasts you can fit in at higher mana levels, meaning more damage through mastery.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.

When I look at our upcoming talent tree in Mists of Pandaria, I'm not blown away. Repentance and Divine Purpose are nearly identical to the versions in the retribution tree today. Pursuit of Justice and Speed of Light have been edited slightly but fulfill the same general roles. There are definitely some new talents in the mix as well, like Holy Avenger and the new Sanctified Wrath, but many of the choices are simply repeats of existing talents.

I have a few ideas on how to fix that. With equal parts of stealing talents from other classes and coming up with brand new ones, we could liven up our options quite a bit. I want to see more dynamic healing options available, rather than yet another cooldown like Clemency to manage. We spend most of our time in the trenches, pressing Holy Light and Holy Shock until our fingers are numb. Improving holy's style of healing will go a long way toward making the class more exciting to play.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we are delighted to discover that we are still able to create localized black holes in the next expansion.

To me, the best thing about Mists of Pandaria talents is how they benefit me so much more than the rest of my colleagues on this column. Tanks and healers do not, as a rule, care about anything that affects their damage. They care about survivability and a lot of stuff that looks suspiciously like what we call utility and -- perhaps most of all -- outrolling the hunters on Kiril. To see a talent tree full of things that do not improve anybody's damage gives me great pleasure.

After finishing this article, I realized that I had considered many of these talents largely in the context of how annoying I could make life for a 5-man group by using them. Hmmm.

We meet again, Mr. PuG. But this time, the advantage is mine.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we finish what we started in our last cloumn, which will involve wild speculation, irresponsible levels of optimism, and a giddy and in all likelihood unwarranted sense of unchecked excitement about tooltips.

If you missed part one, what were you thinking? We talked about the updated Mists of Pandaria talents and even made some disparaging comments about warlocks. It was super fun -- you should go check it out. But hurry up about it.

Because we have new spells to discuss.

Like that one up there in the picture. It's rad.

Arcane spells

Arcane Charge An Arcane Charge, generated by Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles, and consumed by Arcane Barrage. Stacks up to 4 times (Passive).

This is a brand new spell, and it's by far the single biggest game-changer for arcane mages in the new calculator. You pick it up if you spec arcane at level 10, alongside good old Arcane Blast, and it changes how that spell works, along with every other major arcane nuke.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.

Blizzard recently promised to release a flurry of Mists of Pandaria information in March, but apparently it's opened the gates early. The Mists of Pandaria talent calculator and ability list received a massive update this week, giving us new info on the talents and spells that holy paladins can look forward to in Mists. In addition, the Blizzard community managers have been answering questions about the new data at a rapid-fire rate.

Holy paladins have a lot to look forward to in Mists. It's clear that the developers have been looking at our weaknesses as healers, as several of our long-standing issues have been addressed. While we've always had a wide variety of utility abilities, until recently, holy paladins really only had single-target heals at their disposal. With the introduction of the revamped Holy Radiance in late Cataclysm and now the new talent options we'll in Mists, our base healing toolbox is looking more and more complete.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week we use our mystical time chicken powers to gaze into the future, which, incidentally, is so bright, we gotta wear shades. Or rather, we gotta wear mystical time chicken goggles.

No time to talk. We need to focus. A whole lot of ground to cover, guys. The Mists of Pandaria talent calculator has been updated, and all sorts of craziness be jumpin' off, yo. We've got entirely new abilities, we've got fresh takes on traditional favorites, and we've got substantial retoolings of the root mechanics of whole specs. Let's dive right in.

Talent changes

Talent tier 1 has stayed the same as the last go round, but tier 2 has a brand new ability in it, as well as a reworking of Blazing Speed that should make it a far more attractive choice.

Temporal Shield (New ability) Envelops you in a temporal shield for 4 seconds. Damage taken while shielded will be undone over 6 seconds. Not on the global cooldown. (3% base mana, Instant Cast, 25-second cooldown)

Blazing Speed Suppresses movement slowing effects and increases your movement speed by 150% for 1.50 seconds. May only be activated after taking a melee or spell hit greater than 2% of your total health. This spell may be cast while a cast time spell is in progress. (Instant cast, 25-second cooldown)

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we finish our conversation about things that may or may not ever happen, and even if they do, they won't for a very long time. Man, I love wild speculation.

This week, because they hate me, and because I actually had something written in advance for once, Blizzard went and stealth-updated the MoP talent calculator with no warning whatsoever. I submit that from here on out, Blizzard needs to give me at least a week's notice before it makes significant changes to the game or any of its future versions. I think it's only fair, since mages are getting the ability to Alter Time, that we get just a little bit of a jump on the future. I have deadlines to meet, people! Work with me here.

The good news is that the majority of the changes appear to have been made to the part of the talent calculator we haven't discussed yet: the actual talents. If you missed them, here are the first two parts of this discussion:

• Part one: The baseline spells
• Part two: The spec spells

And now, if you click the link below, you'll magically teleport to part three. No, I won't port you to Org. Stop asking.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This week, we have all kinds of talents to talk about. New talents, old talents, old talents with new talent scent, talents that look new but smell old, old talents that kill warlocks in new ways, cupcakes that taste like cranberry sauce, skillets that cook pastries that look like this ... I may or may not have eaten too much pie this week.

OK, we'd better get started. Lots to talk about and not much time or space with which to discuss it. I assume you've all had a chance to fiddle with the Mists of Pandaria talent calculator Blizzard just put on the official site? If not, go look, then come back.

It's interesting stuff. It's important, I think, that I stress that even though this is an official, Blizzard-sponsored reveal, all of this information is pre-pre-pre-alpha stuff, and it absolutely will change substantially before any of it goes live. So don't get married to the mechanics of any of these talents and skills as they're presented here. Don't squint too hard at the specific numbers, either. This is being presented so we can mull it over and give constructive feedback, and so that we can get a more detailed sense of the direction MoP's major talent overhaul will be taking our beloved mage class.

So let's get busy mulling.

Blizzard played up the Cataclysm expansion as a groundbreaking expansion that would change everything, but the truth is that the Shattering was nothing compared to what is happening to class talent trees in the new Mists of Pandaria expansion. Those giant talent trees we visited every two levels are gone, replaced with six separate choices spread across the course of 90 levels.

To be fair, there are a lot of terrific ideas in what Blizzard is planning to do with our talent trees. Removed are the choices that everyone should make. And yes, Blizzard did say that in Cataclysm, but this time, the designers mean it. What shadow priest doesn't take Vampiric Touch? What balance druid doesn't invest that crucial talent point to take Moonkin Form?

But ultimately, if the goal here is to make things easier on the players, to make this a choice that players don't need to extensively research, Blizzard totally missed the mark.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen comes from out of the darkness to bask in your loving adoration (and to smack Tyler with a Shadow Word: Death when he's least expecting it).

Cataclysm was a great expansion to play a shadow priest in, but if what we learned at BlizzCon 2011 is any clue, playing a shadow priest in Mists of Pandaria is going to be a whole lot better.

I know those are big words, but when we start delving into the new-for-MoP talent trees, I feel these new talents will back those words up. We're getting a new playmate for our Shadowfiend, a whole new talent tree with spectacular new abilities, and a new, RNG-free mechanism for Shadow Orbs and Mind Blast. And, oh yeah: Pandaren can be shadow priests.

Excited? You should be.

Our friends over at Wowhead News have burned the midnight oil, and have transcribed all the talent information released at BlizzCon to create a Mists of Pandaria talent calculator. (Druids chosen for the screenshot because they're the best class in the game...though I may be biased.)

Now, I'm not sure how much calculation you'll actually need to do when you only have six choices to make, but congratulations to the Wowhead team for getting this put together so quickly. Fore more information on talents, check out our liveblog of the Class Talent System Panel.

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The news is out -- we'll be playing Mists of Pandaria! Find out what's in store with an all-new talent system, peek over our shoulder at our Pandaren hands-on, and get ready to battle your companion pets against others. It's all here right at WoW Insider!

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