Hints on Cataclysm talent rework

[Terrax of the Wind]

Posting some blue response before it goes in the front page tommorow:

Someone asked:
Will we keep simple talents that staticly reduce cooldown or cast times?
Will talents that staticly increase walk/run speed by 15% count as interesting?
Will talents that staticly increase or decrease the length of time a dot or hot ticks for count as interesting?

GC:
Yes, all of those are "interesting." Sure reducing cooldown or cast time is just a dps (or healing) increase, but it does so in a way that requires more on the part of the player than just passively boosting dps (or healing). It changes your rotation depending on whether you have that talent or not. It makes your dps tree play differently from your healing tree.

Everyone can come up with the example of "I think X talent is really fun, but I only have 2 free points in my build, so I can't get it." We'd like to see that 2 be a much larger number, like 10 or more.

Another way to think about it is that every talent in say the Elemental tree also says "...and increases your spell damage." That's the bonus you get just for investing in the tree.

Talents are one of the few choices with regard to customizing their character that players really get. Gear is often subject to random elements or even whether you have access to the content or not. Everyone gets the same spells as they level. We can't get away from cookie-cutter builds completely, but we can have more of the type that say "and spend your last several points wherever you want."

Too early to tell, but it seems like it won't be that massive of an overhaul on the talents after all. Still looking forward to the Mastery system though.

Some guy/gal QQing about Spirit or mana regen:
Spirit is the lamest stat of them all and yet you are going to force that on all the healers. So I guess what your goal here is is to improve the quality of life for everyone else, while healers still get second rate gear and stats. Neat.

I don't know how you guys can't see that MP5 is superior to spirit. MP5 doesn't need talents to function, and it works at maximum capacity 100% of the time. Spirit needs talents to function at all and you have to stop casting for too long to even see any increased regen.

GC's response:
I was about to write what I often do about healer mana management, which is that without mana being a consideration, healing is boring because you can just use your most powerful spell non-stop. Then I read your second paragraph, and it seems like you sort of agree with that. Imagine then that both MP5 and Spirit are going away and being replaced by a new stat called "Regen." Then imagine that a few weeks down the road, we decided that "Spirit" was a sexier name than "Regen."

So, Spirit's gonna be awesome for mana regen in Cataclysm for healers, but not to the point where mana won't be an issue.

[Critpocket]

nice info thx

[purebalance]

Whoever posted the spirit comment there is retarded and not paying much attention to the stat overhaul really. Spirit is the old "healing power" and int becomes spell damage in a sense. Both stats will encompass the needs of their respective classes just like AGI will be solely for rogues, hunters, ferals, and enh shaman while STR will be only for ret/prot pally, dk, warrior.

[Terrax of the Wind]

Problem is a good (well maybe a few) people posting/qq'ing about future changes that aren't even official yet make some crazy assumptions. But alas, when enough people cry they eventually get what they want.

[Terrax of the Wind]

I guess this can be locked now that it's in the front page 8)

[skajaki]

As I understand it they revamping stats so they work as they do in Vanilla..
Spirit - regen/spell power
Stamina (warlocks, or it might have been spirit, dont remember actaully since I only lvled one to 40:P) - %spellpower
Intellect - Spelldmg

and things like that,