You’ve gotta love Beta season. You get all worked up about, oh, let’s say, a talent tree preview. But much QQ ensues! And then Blizzard changes everything.
One of the more common comments about the new trees was that they did not live up to Blizzcon promises. Blizzard said they were going to do away with passive required talents, like straight-up damage and healing buffs, but the preview trees were still full of them. I think that was a fair assessment. So Blizz shifted gears, and the changes will be introduced in a Beta build coming soon.
In brief:
- Talent trees will get shorter. A lot shorter.
- You’ll pick your spec at level 10 and be locked out of the other trees until you have spent at least 31 points in your chosen tree.
- You’ll get a signature ability early: Penance for baby disc priests. Earth Shield for baby resto shamans.
- Mastery bonuses — originally planned to scale according to how many points you spent in a given tree — will be granted when you pick a tree and will be a percentage that scales with your level. Er, the passive mastery bonuses anyway (such as Meditation, which all priests get). The unique Mastery bonuses (like shadow orbs for shadow priests and better shields for disc) will come as a trainable passive skill at 75 and will scale up as you acquire gear with the Mastery stat on it. At least that’s how I understood it.
Naturally, this all means that the world will likely end soon. No, really! Just check the official forums if you don’t believe me!
I think the changes sound intriguing. I’m not sure I like being locked out of the other two trees until level 40, but I’m keeping an open mind for now. Haters gonna hate and all, but personally, what I really want Blizzard to do is to keep the game interesting. I’m eager to hear how the changes are received once they hit Beta.
July 9, 2010 at 9:41 am
Hygiene…um…never mind…
I already had my disc specc ready for the Cataclysm as well.
But I am still very excited about these changes and eager to see where Blizz is going with this. Trading this lockout from other talent trees for spec-defining abilities right off the bat (that is, at level 10) is – in my opinion – just fair. Imagine, say, holy priests that get Penance, because they say they want to be disc, but then put all their points in Holy. There would either be possibilities for exploitation, or it would make no sense to do this anyway. So, the lockout is allright with me (most people don’t play hybrid specs anyway).
One thing that must have evaded your eyes: we won’t get 76 talent points for 85 levels anymore. We will gain a talent point “every other level”, and reaching level 85 will leave us with 41 talent points (in total!) to spend.
So, you might see endgame specs like 31/10/0 or something along those lines (the 31-points talents will be the “top talents” in the trees, just like the 51-points talents now).
The respective talent trees are said to contain 38-43 points each, so you could put all your points into one tree if you wanted. In most cases, anyway.
All the best,
Bartol
PS: Just to prevent me from boasting: you did not read up on this because of my (wowcohol-related) mail, did you?
July 9, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Well, with Beta anything can always change, so it’s best to not get your heart too set on anything, right?
I hadn’t thought about the possibility for exploitation of the bonuses, but that’s a great point. And yeah, when I’m building a spec, I do usually spec all into my main tree first, then fill out anything I need in other trees. I think a lot of new players wind up with these weird, multi-tree builds because they don’t know any better, so the lockout will help them.
Actually, I did see the part about the talent points every other level, but forgot to mention it in the post. D’oh!
And I didn’t see your email till this morning.
I enjoyed it very much, though!
July 10, 2010 at 1:12 pm
See, and I also forgot to mention something in my comment (we are all getting older, aren’t we…well…men alot faster than women).
I mentioned the talent points every other level thing because you said:
“I’m not sure I like being locked out of the other two trees until level 40, but I’m keeping an open mind for now.”
Seeing that there won’t be a talent point every level, we will probably be looking at lockouts until level 70.
Just wanted to add that bit.
And I’m happy the email was enjoyable
July 14, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Update:
The new, trimmed versions of the talents are available.
Of course, we are still in beta and nothing’s final…
July 15, 2010 at 4:04 am
Ha! Sharp catch on my error about the talent points… we’ll be locked out of other trees till quite late, in fact. I haven’t had a chance yet to look at the new trees yet, but I’m excited to see them. And indeed, lots could change still!