Cataclysm's Talent Trees

I can't remember if we're still on an intermission. Frankly, that got out of hand.

But anyway.

I've yet to accomplish anything today. My mind just isn't up to anything, and as of right now I've got a headache. So I decided, hey, let's write a blog entry.

What I want to talk about today is how the new talent tree changes for World of Warcraft's new expansion, specifically the ones that are pissing me off.

I'm trying to get into the beta for the sole purpose that I can complain about this.
Well, that's a lie. But it's one of the biggest reasons, because that's the only way I'm going to get the designers at blizzard to, at the very least, skim my complaints before throwing them away, short of flying to California and forcing my way through Blizzard's heavily guarded compound, battling through waves upon waves of employees, penetrating Blizzard's inner sanctum and slaying the 'big names' (Chris Metzen, for example, presumably riding atop his winged steed of doom), before reaching it's core and starting the countdown sequence that will...

Jesus. I forgot where I was going with that.

Anyway, the talent tree changes.
First off, they're making the talent trees much, much smaller. You only get a talent point every second level though, so to the person who wanted to have a ton of points in two different specs, tough luck.

But the way some trees are constructed is stupid. Lets take Warriors.
I'm a Fury spec (I loves me some critical strikes). Naturally, I want to check out the Fury talents for Cataclysm, just to make sure my spec is largely unchanged.

I'm disappointed. I know this sort of thing isn't set in stone, but you could have worked harder.

Here's one thing I would do right off the bat - move Blood Craze over to Protection and Incite over to Fury. They just don't make any sense where they are - Blood Craze has a chance to heal you if you take damage and Incite gives your Heroic Strike an increased critical strike chance and makes your Heroic Strike critical strikes give your next Heroic Strike an increases chance to critically strike.

Say that five times fast.

I would also increase the length of Enrage. Anything but 4 seconds. 4 seconds is barely enough time to make that 10% extra damage count. 7 seconds seems a lot better - it grantees at least 2 auto-attack hits (assuming you're using a two hander), and how many special attacks you can cram into that tiny window of opportunity.

Battle Trance and Cruelty are weird, too. Why would I care about Mortal Strike or Shield Slam? Answer is I don't. All I want is Bloodthirst.

Tell you what - find a way to migrate the Shield Slam and Mortal Strike bonus to their respective trees, and give us bonus that we Fury warriors actually care about - Heroic Strike, Slam, and/or Execute in addition to Bloodthirst.

And what's the point of giving me Die by the Sword? That has no place in Fury. Give it to Protection.
Seriously! Why is that even there?
And what the hell is with Booming Voice now? "Reduces the cooldown of your Battle Shout and Commanding Shout by 0.05 seconds".

ZERO POINT ZERO FIVE SECONDS? And the next level reduces by 0.1 seconds! What the hell is the point? Can't you increase it's effectiveness instead of decreasing it's cooldown by a fraction of a fraction of a second?

Titan's Grip and Single-Minded Fury will no doubt cause a LOT of debate. No longer is there a no-brainer choice when it comes to Fury warriors - now we have to really think about what one is better.

I assume Titan's Grip does more all out damage, but Single-Minded Fury is faster? Perhaps Single-Minded Fury does actually do more damage, and Titan's Grip is just for the "I want to wield 2 two handers at the same time" crowd. Maybe some rethinking in that department would be useful, or perhaps giving us a little more information by writing a TG vs. SMF article.

Maybe they're trying to make it so that either choice has very little differences so it's easy to choose, or they're trying to weed out Titan's Grip altogether, to which I ask; WHY!? Why not have the two talents good for different things?

How about this - TG automatically grants heavier hits, increases damage for, perhaps, Cleave (by hitting with both weapons). SMF is faster, and increases damage for, I don't know, Slam maybe (by hitting with both weapons), and both talents grant a small, passive bonus to critically hit with their respective abilities.

(Cataclysm's Warrior Talent Tree here.)

Let's look at another talent tree.
Hmm... Resto shamans look pretty good... wait, hang on.

Spark of Life confuses me. Shouldn't you give more priority to healing done than healing received? After all, shamans shouldn't tank, and they don;t have any real need to get extra healing. Now, if it were a tank, yes. But a DPS/Healer class? No.

Change the 6% to healing received and the 15% to healing done and it should be sweet. Telluric Currents doesn't make any sense - after all, it's a maximum of 40% of the damage dealt, surely that would be less than the mana cost. I could be wrong, but it seems like a stupid way to gain mana when you have Water Shield and Mana Tide Totem.

Lesee, lesee... Assassination Rogues look pretty good, Druids... oh dear.

Restoration Druids.
At least, they used to be.
I remember a time when the Restoration talent tree used to be about healing, not a filler tree for the other two trees to put points into when they filled up their own.

No. Blizzard, the Restoration tree for Druids is just criminal.

Blessing of the Grove is pretty pathetic, even for the other trees, and for a Restoration Druid, Forur is useless (as it doesn't contain any bonuses for Tree of Life form). So, the only talent of any real use is Master Shapeshifter, and even then it's only to get the 2% bonus healing for Tree of Life form, something you get only at a veeery high level, so It's completely useless from the start anyway.

In fact, the real talent that actually does something for you is in teir 2, which increases your Swiftmend and Rejuvenation healing by 15%. So, I have to spend 19 levels with largely useless talents before I get a proper one.

Either make Blessing of the Grove more friendly to healers (increasing the effect of Healing Touch and making my rejuve better than just 4%?) or start redesigning the talent tree.

Migrate things like Moonglow and Genesis over to Restoration. Give Perseverance to Feral, they need it more. I would have thought you guys over there actually thought about this, but apparently none of you have a Resto Druid, or if you do he or she is so utterly timid he/she is too scared to voice a complaint.

(Cataclysm's Druid Talent Tree here.)


Hunters look good, but please call their 'resource' something other than focus. Pets have focus, and apparently so do Hunters, which makes it confusing to tell whether or not Termination affects you or your pet.

Don't play a Paladin or Priest... yet. Fire mage looks pretty good, and I haven't played my Warlock enough to formulate an opinion about them.

So that leaves Death Knights.
Death Knights are being screwed with in Cataclysm. Gone are the days where all three trees were good at either tanking and/or DPS. Now, Blood is the major tanker, and Frost and Unholy get to squabble with each other about who does the better DPS.

As of this moment, Blood has all sorts of things that make it attractive to tanks - increased healing, Improved Death Strike, Bloodworms, ect. Frost has a lot of damage reduction abilities in it, and Unholy has the thing where it's got... look, I don't know. I don't play a Death Knight anymore (not since I embraced healing and my Shaman) and I never really got Unholy. Sure, you got a cool zombie pet, but Blood just seemed so, so much better.

Anyway, Blizzard finally set the record straight and, in my mind, fixed the talent trees. Blood is now the definite tanking class (most of the talents reflect tanking and it has Bone Shield now), Frost improves things like Icy Touch and Obliterate as well as being able to dual wield, and Unholy has diseases, zombies and spells.

Getting back to the point, looks good for Death Knights as a whole. The three talent trees are a lot better now, in my opinion.


So, that concludes our adventure into Cataclysm's talent trees. Hopefully, Blizzard will read this blog post and discover what visionary of design I am and offer me a job immediately.
Actually, nobody reads this blog, so the likelihood of that happening is slim to none. But still, it's possible that somebody will find this, and that somebody will know somebody who knows ect until it gets to Chris Metzen's golden throne polisher who will in turn direct Mr. Metzen to my blog.
That's probably never going to happen. But I will remain optimistic.

Also, I've entered the Cataclysm Beta Key Contest that Wowhead is hosting, and I've signed up as a Beta tester with Battle.net, so there's always I chance I could get in.

The ups and downs of being a healer

About a month or so ago I pulled out my level 25 Shaman. I was getting a bit tired of running around in Northrend with my DPS spec'd Death Knight, doing random dungeons (or pugs) almost every day, hacking and slashing my way through enemies with my enormous axe.

I pulled out my Shaman to try this 'healing' thing out. I was lead to believe it was the job with the most responsibility, so I didn't take it. Almost every class I've ever played has been spec'd to DPS, and I rarely play any class that can do otherwise. I've never played a priest, and my druid is resting happily on level 25, waiting for me to start caring about my Alliance characters again.

So, I wheeled out my Shaman, respec'd in Restoration, and clicked the 'Join random dungeon' button.

Not one second - not one second - passed before I saw the familiar "Enter dungeon" button in front of me.

I was starting to like my Shaman, who I made god knows how long ago and abandoned in favour of a different class.

Thrust into my first dungeon as a healer, I did rather well. The party didn't wipe, and the tank stayed above 50 health almost through the entire dungeon.

I did bare in mind that this was a reasonably low level dungeon, and the dangers posed there aren't nearly as deadly as some of the later dungeons I would face. And I did use Healing Wave every time the tank took damage, even if it was nothing more than a simple scratch.


My Shaman's now 42, and I've learnt a lot about the art of healing, and I respect healers a hell of a lot more than I did when I played my Death Knight.

I suppose it is true that healers have the most responsibility on the party. Coming in close second is the tank, and they share about an equal amount of stress - the tank is supposed to keep all the enemies attacking him, and the healer is supposed to keep that tank alive (and make sure the rest of the party stays alive too).

My time as a healer has changed me somewhat. My aim is to no longer cause damage - it is to heal it. It was a massive shift from how I used to play. Playing used to be rather simple - keep hitting the guy until he falls down. Now, I have to make sure certain people don't fall down.

As a healer, you learn to manage your mana. If you don't, you'll be either running out of mana in the middle of a fight [very, very bad] or you'll be stopping after every fight to drink you mana back up [makes the dungeon take twice as long]. For example, only healing the tank when he or she actually needs it (as opposed to healing them whenever they took even the most pathetic amount of damage), and using Chain Heal when most of the party needs only a little healing to keep them going.

I've also learnt that most people don't play healers for a reason. Healers have a huge amount of pressure to make sure the tank stays alive, and ever since I started dungeoneering (going into random after random) I've found the tank does as little as possible to help you.

Out of every ten dungeons I go into, only two tanks ever bother to watch the party's health and mana, and at least another two are complete dickheads - charging off into the distance and expecting everybody to follow him, and when everybody inevitably doesn't (this type doesn't tell everyone he's making a massive pull) he leaves because it's everybody else's fault. And then other people start leaving because it takes ages to find another tank.

The other six don't really care either way. They'll probably stop if you say "I'm out of mana", but they expect you to take care of the party as a whole.

Another thing that I've learnt is some people can't handle wiping. It's an enormous deal for them, like it's the end of the goddamn world (the actual end of the goddamn world is coming later on this year, hopefully).
They don't realize I'm a Shaman with the maxed out Improved Reincarnation talent and Glyph of Renewed Life. By the time I'm ready to reincarnate, the drama queens have already left, and there's a high likelihood that one of those drama queens will be the tank.

Healing is still something I'm having fun with, though. It's a lot more different than playing a DPS class, and I'm enjoying playing my Shaman if only for the reason that it's a different experience.

Plus, you get into random dungeons a lot quicker. And at level 80, once you start doing raids, everyone is looking for a healer.

Don't be afraid to play a healer - once you've got the basics down, it's a lot simpler than you think.