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.