The Glade 4.0

I don't really think there's going to be a big difference whatsoever for players at max level.

You're still going to all have your 51 point talent. Now it will be a 31 point talent.

You're still going to get your passive bonuses, only it won't take things like spending 5 levels' worth of talent points in a row on talents like Malice or Purification. Not that every talent will be a Body and Soul or an Omen of Clarity, but there hopefully won't be any talents that you go 5 levels on and never even notice the difference short of looking at combat log parses.

It may reduce the number of "viable" specs, but pretty superficially if anything. If they are at all successful in their plans for Cata, that number should still be higher in the expansion than it is today.

This. Exactly.

The talent changes have promise.

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Holy shitsnacks!

This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I complained that the talent trees had gotten too deep, but I wholeheartedly applaud their intent and will absolutely not bash it 'til I try it.
Thank you, Blizzard, for recognizing the problem and working to address it.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Well, we could always go the AO route with Talents/Character Development. That's something I'd like to see done in a more modern MMO.

220 Levels
10 Title Levels
20 Perks
30 Alien Perks
150 Research Perks

And absolute control over all skill and stat distribution via the IP System.

If you want granular character development, AO is still the king Hands Down.

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Never played AO - elucidate please?

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Of all the classes that I play, I can only think of maybe one or two talents *total* that I would have called "lame" or "filler" talents. Taking anything else away would not be fun for me and would make me far less effective.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Numbuk:

I'm not so sure that's the case. For instance, Hunter's currently have a 257.8% Critical Strike Multiplier, regardless of spec, through gear and gem and talent combinations. All Hunter's have this Critical Strike Multiplier. If we take 5 talent points out of the MM tree, reduce it's cap by 5, and make that multiplier standard, how have we changed anything?

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Then that starts the normalization of all the specs, which I am not really for. I like playing underdog/unique specs. My favorite thing in warcraft is playing a spec that everyone deems as a poor spec, and the whipping the tar out of more "optimized" players (and by whipping the tar, I mean passing them up on the dps charts).

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Can you give an example of one of those "underdog" specs?

I'm not keen on the "You have to get to the bottom of one tree before getting another" thing, but other than that.. well, I'll keep an open mind.

I'm deeply suspicious though. I like passive talents that just boost crit chance, dodge, or whatever.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Subtlety

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The thing is, there's really extremely little options for what the best talent spec actually is. The optimal distribution for your spec may vary slightly depending on your gear, but generally speaking for your gear at any given time there is an optimal spec. This is even true of healing, though this is slightly harder to pin down mathematically since healing isn't just about HPS. I feel a bit more free to spec as a healer, but in reality I don't really have all that much meaningful choice anyway.

There are plenty of people that have less than optimal specs, gemming, or gear who beat out those who are optimized. This is unarguable.

But if you're beating dudes as Subtlety, for example, it's cause you're simply a lot better a player, and you'd be doing even more if you were Combat or Assassination (depending on your gear!) :p

The only thing I will say in favor of "underdog" specs is that from what I've seen, almost all of the EJ sort of theorycrafting assumes a tank and spank fight. I've seen exactly one thread on EJ (and none anywhere else, though admittedly I don't look in a ton of places) that even mentions doing something about this. SimulationCraft has an option to sim a "helter skelter" fight which is probably a help, though even that can't answer everything, and no simulation really can. A lot of people consciously realize that these problems with standard theorycrafting exist, but yet they continue to gem and such exactly to that basic theorycrafting.

Here is one example, and maybe you guys will disagree or agree, but I'm laying it out as something to consider. Feral dps absolutely despises hit rating and expertise rating until you're basically in heroic ICC25 gear. Armor Pen cap comes first and foremost, and once that is reached, the crit cap is your next goal. Only then are kitties instructed to look at actually gemming hit/expertise, and only then as a consequence of sorta extending the crit cap. There is a good reason for this. Feral talents make it a pretty forgiving spec on misses. There's a lot of downtime in the feral priority system anyway, so it's rarely the case that you "lose" a GCD from a miss.

I was cool with this gearing idea until things worked out such that I lost every piece of gear I had with hit on it. 12 hit rating from my Icewalker enchant was all I had. Only one item with expertise on it, though it's a hefty amount for one item I suppose (legs). Even this was fine with Saurfang, and I was pretty happy with an 11k+ parse on a 10 man hard mode with it, especially given that it's my offspec with offspec loot rules etc etc.

Then I go to Professor and get all the hell messed up on killing the oozes that must die omg fast. Suddenly 2 misses right after an ooze spawn makes a huge difference in my damage output for that ooze. Forsaking hit/expertise is best for optimal feral kitty damage (until aforementioned caps are met at least) but it makes for very inconsistent kitty damage when RNG is against you during important short periods of some boss fights.

The kicker for all this? Hit/expertise isn't THAT bad anyway. I have absolutely terrible trinkets on my kitty gear, since there are always mainspecs that need the few decent feral trinkets that exist in raids nowadays. If I swap in the hit trinket from triumph badges, something that would give unthinking feral theorycrafters an aneurysm, I lose... 15 theoretical dps off my max. Out of ~11k. So on the easy fights like Saurfang I keep my normal trinkets in, but whenever a fight is designed like Professor where short bursts of RNG may really be noticeable, that hit trinket is equipped. I'll lose less than .1% of my max dps in the name of ensuring each Volatile Ooze or Gas Cloud dies reliably and consistently. I've changed any agi/crit gems to agi/hit gems, knowing it's a loss of dps in Saurfang (this loss extremely minimal, though still a loss) in exchange for consistency... and probably a little peace of mind.

There are probably a dozen more such examples where minor adjustments can be made that go against traditional theorycrafting due to reality differing. I've heard a very well respected Enh Shaman support AP instead of Haste for high movement fights.

But all of these things are pretty situational, since the theorycrafting that is done is usually done quite thoroughly and quite well. I don't think I could even change my kitty spec to be better on any individual fight, though I'd have to look at it and see... but if I could, doing so well be a negative for a bunch of other fights besides.

TLDR version: It's wise to be wary of the pitfalls of the established practices arrived at by in-depth theorycrafting, but the very same theorycrafting generally results in a very solid foundation to work off of as a default. Deviating far is almost guaranteed to be a negative thing. And sure enough, the top players in the world never seem to differentiate all that much from established theorycrafting precedent. I armory a feral dps from the world first HLK25 kill and find absolutely 0 surprises in his gearing/gemming.

http://www.wowtal.com/#k=.9mn.deathknight

Preliminary new talent trees, yes it is a link to all of them, I was just on DK at that moment.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Here is a snippet of the patch notes for the latest Cataclysm beta build I feel is worth posting here:

Q u o t e:
A first pass on new talent trees has been implemented.


* Each specialization has been reduced to a 31-point talent tree.
* Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
* 31 points must be spent in the primary specialization tree before any points can be placed in additional trees.
* Players will be asked to choose a specialization at level 10. Doing so will result in the unlocking of a spell or ability unique to that specialization, as well as one or more passive bonuses.
* While this is a first pass on all of the talent trees, death knight, druid, paladin, warlock, Arcane mage, and Assassination rogue trees are not as far along as other specializations.
* More information regarding our plans for talent trees can be found on our Cataclysm forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 0449&sid=1


Latest beta patch notes: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 8&sid=2000

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Yeah, after seeing the talent trees.

No bueno.

I thought they were making them more fun.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Assassination has some issues atm, but Blizzard has acknowledged that. I'm a bit skeptical on the current tier 1 Subtlety talents, too, but that's what beta is for I guess.

Otherwise it seems to be about as expected to me. Not a very big change for max level folks, but there are a few more talents that aren't of the passive extra damage type.

Though I have a Rogue guildie who says something against filler points in trees now. It remains to be seen how Blizzard will take them live after what will probably be 3-4 months of polishing in beta (or 2-3 if they implement them a month early like in WotLK and 3.0?) but it raises a curious question: what exactly is a filler talent, and how does it fit into a talent tree that isn't all must-have min/max sort of talents? It seems to me if you want to have any choice in your talent trees, you need to have some talents that might be called filler talents. Otherwise you will have the same spec for 95% of your talent points that all help out your dps (or healing, or tankability).

I expect it to change between now and retail, but the Combat tree is a good example. For a Combat Rogue, let's say you start with these 18 talent points. Revealing Strike is interesting, and Imp Slice and Dice changes your gameplay in noticeable fashion, but the rest are all fairly standard boring. You have to spend 2 points in something that doesn't directly help your dps at this point. Filler talents? Perhaps, but you really have a choice now. Let's put 2 point in Improved Recuperate to help with the occasional badass boss ability. Then 1 for Adrenaline Rush and 2 for Savage Combat. 2 more points to spend now on utility talents. Blade Twisting can be nice in fights where there are adds that could use snaring. Alternately, Imp Sprint can probably be used on a variety of fights to help out a little.

I'll admit that today's talent trees already have some degree of choice already, and you can especially see that in guilds going for Heroic LK25 kills since everything else is so easy for them at that point. I'm also not saying Cata trees have a whole ton of choice. But they don't seem too bad to me, outside of some polish and some outright fixing (tier 1 Assassination seems broken for an Assassination raider, tier 1 feral only HAS 5 points total, etc). They seem to be about what I expected -- not a big difference for max level players.

Leveling does seem more fun with the revamped trees, however. We shall see.

Unless I miss my guess, this: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=tb0TaMCo.9mn.rogue will be the raiding combat rogue spec. (Or something very similar.

Blade twisting is useless on bosses as they cannot be dazed, and improved leather is just *stupid*. Improved sprint at least provides the movement break.

There's no *choice* in the trees as they are. Having to choose between two equally bad talents (Improved sprint, blade twisting, reinforced leather and throwing spec) is really no choice at all.

The Mut tree is just as bad off, but at least they said it wasn't done.

Mut will look something like this:
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=7mHqhbKb.9mn.rogue "Murderous intent"? Mutilate till 35% and then backstab the **** out of something? Why is improved evis in this tree? Mut envenoms.

I just don't get the design intent

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Holy shitsnacks!

Blade Twisting does work on adds though. However much that matters or not depends on the fights we'll see. I could imagine some uses for what would essentially be "if the Rogue is on an add, it will be snared until the Rogue stops hitting it", but it will all depend on encounter design.

They're no Body and Soul awesome utility talents, but I wasn't really expecting 2 Body and Soul quality talents in each of the 30 trees.

Pretty sure the improved armor and improved Deadly Throw are the designated PVP talents for the tree (armor one possibly for leveling too). Blade Twisting has some overlap. It's not a talent I'd *want* to get for PVE, but if you're forced to make a choice between it and an equally uncommonly used utility talent, then you'd at least have it for those few times it is useful rather than having it sit totally unused since it doesn't help your dps.

DPS is going to be balanced no matter how many utility talents you have or not. The game is a more interesting place if you're forced to pick 2 of Imp Recuperate/Blade Twisting/Imp Sprint than if you'd spend those ~5 points on "your crits gain 5% damage" sort of talents. If Blizzard wants Rogues, Mages, Hunters, and Warlocks doing an average of 15k dps or whatever, they'll adjust talents or abilities to do so. The number of dps increasing talents doesn't matter at all. You'll be at 15k if you're forced to spend points on very situational talents or not... so in my book it's a good thing if you have to. :p

This is one of the problems the community had with current Tree of Life form. It looks so amazing when you read the tooltip! But... we're (obviously) balanced around it. So essentially it's 1 talent point to catch up to the other healers, and when we cast any Balance spell (Faerie Fire, Roots/Cyclone, or any nukes) we actually set ourselves at a disadvantage until we spend another GCD going back into Tree.

Not to say there aren't any interesting passive dps increasing talents, such as Combat Potency, and I'm not saying that Blizzard should get rid of all or most of even the boring talents. But unless the talents truly are 99% useless for PVE raiding like Reinforced Leather or Imp Deadly Throw I'm pretty happy to get any choice.

Resto Druids have gone from no utility choices (and basically no choice at all, if you include current gear in the picture) to... very very little. Hoping that improves! They did call out Druid trees as unpolished too so we'll see.

I dunno, I'm still skeptical. I was first looking forward to the changes, and now I'm just kinda meh about them. The utility talents just seem useless overall, and are points I'd rather spend somewhere else, but I have to spend them to get down the tree.

I just don't think "Improved Deadly Throw and Reinforced leather" are "utility"



That is what they need to accomplish.

Not "Crap, which of these am I going to stick two points into so I can get to the next tier... Bah, it doesn't matter, they're both useless."

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yeah it definitely could be better, though I think it's harder to do it for PVE than that guy makes out using largely PVP examples (though the mobility one might be good).

I don't think we've gone backwards at all, however, and in many cases I've looked at so far seems an improvement. Perhaps not up to par with what I hoped, but I didn't expect there to be 2 (or more in that Shaman example) compelling utility talents in each tree. Perhaps that's just the cynic in me and I could do better if I tried myself, though. :p

And I'm definitely not lumping in Reinforced Leather and Improved Deadly Throw in as utility talents, don't worry. :p Outside of potential for leveling, as someone who doesn't PVP with any degree of seriousness unless you count my Prot War in his Prot War/Arcane Mage/Resto Druid 3's team (and really who could take that comp seriously? :p), I see them as useless talents that are there to sate the PVP side of things. They're in every tree and while some stick out more than others I'll grudgingly accept them since I guess PVPers have to have their stuff too. Grumble grumble.

It might be interesting to come up with the base talent trees for a variety of specs and see what options there are with the leftover points. It probably will become more relevant as we get closer to Cataclysm, since quite a few specs seem to be in a pretty unpolished state as they stand today. I'm looking at Disc now (which needs to spec at least one point into some use of Smite currently... to be changed in the near future?) and I see a choice of faster casts on your cast time heals (nearly boring choice), more crit for what amounts to tank healing (boring choice), 20% shorter cooldowns (kinda neat), and mana reduction on your cast time heals (boring choice). You only have points enough for one of those. I believe Disc in today's WoW doesn't really have any options unless you include mana reduction ones which are of dubious use in WotLK. So it should be more compelling, but it's still an improvement.

I'd certainly not be against it if every talent that wasn't straight dps/healing/survivability increases were as useful as something like Body and Soul though, if Blizzard can pull it off. :p Maybe I'd even be pleased with like... sets of talents. For example, that Thunderstorm sort of one. Movement is common in the majority of raid fights, and having a way to get off cast time spells on the move would prove handy for many casters, so perhaps most casters could get a talent along those lines as one of the utility talents? Sort of boring to standardize them by giving them to so many, but it's better than small amount of crit on half of your heals.

Though... I'm getting that itch that I'm making a set of talents that would be 'required' here, which is contrary to the goal here... so I dunno. It's tough.

Well, lets go through something I'm familiar with.

The Humble Mut Rogue. (I know they said *** isn't done yet.. but still.)

Tier 1 (Ooh! My first talent point!)
Hmm, deadly momentum seems cool. I'll drop 2 points in that. Since I don't use eviscerate cause I'm not bad, I'll drop the other 3 in Lethality, even though its kinda dull.
(2 pts DM, 3 pts Lethality)

Tier 2 (So how do I rogue?)
Ruthlessness gives me more combo points, and CPs are good (http://www.elitistjerks.com tells me so). Quickening looks neat, movement is a good thing. Blackjack? Nah. I don't pvp much, and they'll just trinket it anyway or something. Puncturing wounds though... that's a solid DPS increase, and since I do DPS, I'll get that.
(3pts puncturing wounds, 3 pts ruthlessness)

Tier 3 (But I spent 6 on 2... do I only have 4 now?)
Deadly brew, good for PvP... not for me. Cold Blood is a must have. (they lowered the C/D and added 25 energy to it? Nice!) and 3pts in vile poisons. Improved Expose? I dunno yet.
(1 pt Cold Blood, 3 pts Vile Poisons) Note, I really haven't had a significant choice yet.

Tier 4 (Only 2 choices? Hmm...)
Murderous intent is new. Looks like they want us to BS a mob below 35 to use a different button. So, I'll take 3 pts in seal fate, and drop back to take 2 in quickening.

Tier 5 (I WANT THEM ALL)
And yes, I do want them all. All 3 talents in this tier are must haves.

Tier 6 (Rupture? Garrote? Mut doesn't bleed...)
3 points in CttC. Venomous wounds? I'm iffy on this. It seems like it'd be good, but it only affects Rupture and Garrote. Mut doesn't have anything that makes rupture better, and garrote isn't the best opener. Hunger for blood is gone, so we don't need to have a bleed up. So, 3 pts in CTTC.

Tier 6 (I made it! I can rogue nao!)
So wait... Vendetta is a self only Hunter's Mark? There's really nothing else that I really want though... maybe back to fill murderous intent... but eh, I'm not sold on that either. So, Vendetta it is.

Now I have 10 more points to go.
3 points in Precision.
3 points in relentless strikes
2 points in improved recuperate and one in opportunity or three in opportunity depending on if Recuperate sucks.

So... where are my fun choices here?

http://www.wowtal.com/#k=xuw9owXs-.9mn.rogue

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Holy shitsnacks!

Let's try Combat!

Tier 1 (Combat combat bo-bombat banana-fanna fo fombat)
Imp. Recup could be handy, but I need more DPS, so I'll take 3 in Sinister and 3 in precision.

Tier 2 (Can I kick the speed habit?)
Imp sprint looks alright, but I don't pvp much, Imp. Kick... eh. Regular kick is good enough. So 3 in aggression and 2 in Imp. SnD.

Tier 3 (I find your lack of talent choices... Revealing.)
New attack button to press, gotta have that. And the other 3 pts go to more melee haste. Mmmm haste. Reinforced armor and improved gouge are joke talents that should be removed

Tier 4 (Yes, my combat is very potent.)
Wait, do I have a choice to make here? Is it interesting? After I take 3 pts in Combat Potency... then what does a PvE Raiding rogue do? I have to make a choice! But its not a fun one, cause I don't *want* any of the choices.
Improved Recuperate
Improved Gouge
Improved Sprint
Improved Kick
Blade Twisting
Reinforced Leather
Which one of those sucks least? /sighs and puts 2 pts in Imp. Recuperate.

Tier 5 (Ah! What a rush! )
Wait! Could it be?! Another choice? OMG! Except... its the same as the last one. After I spend the three points for Adrenaline Rush and Savage Combat... I have two more points mocking me!
Improved Recuperate <-- Taken previously.
Improved Gouge
Improved Sprint
Improved Kick
Blade Twisting
Reinforced Leather
Throwing Specialization
Now which one sucks least! /sighs again flips a coin and comes up Improved Sprint. Or Blade Twisting. Either really. Meh.

Tier 6 (These two don't suck. Like alot of not sucking.)
Actually, both of these talents are *really* nice looking. But, on the downside, they're both passive.

Tier 7 (Killing Spree!)
Yeah, Killing spree. Its solid, and fun. I'll take it.

And 10 more points.
3 pts in Lethality
3 in Improved Eviscerate
1 in Ruthlessness
3 in Relentless Strikes

That should work ok

So yeah.
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=tbCp39xa.9mn.rogue

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Holy shitsnacks!

On a side note, I would *love* to try PvP as this spec.
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=75N8nnMN6.9mn.rogue
But being locked into 31 points in one tree makes me sad.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what kind of madness causes a Combat to take Deadly Momentum as a theoretical raid talent over a couple points in Imp Eviscerate?

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

Err...

You didn't see that.
I'm still not sure why Imp. Evis is in assassination and forgot about it.

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Holy shitsnacks!