Sloppily released talent trees ?

[KresnikHellfire]

When logging on to mmo-champ today I was pretty excited to see the new talent trees, and don't get me wrong - there's been a lot of new stuff that has been pretty awesome to see.

But I was just wondering, what was the "point" of blizzard releasing these 4 class talent trees in this state ? I'll just talk about the shadowpriest changes as an example, since that's the tree I've known best for the past 3 years:

- Tier 1 shadow tree, Darkness is still there. Darkness was a talent they specifically listed they want to get rid of cataclysm, because it's "boring". Yet it's still there, unchanged and no note about changing it.

- Tier 1 shadow tree talent "Dark thoughts:
"Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting any Shadow spell by 35/70%"
Tooltip from Improved Shadowform includes:
"and reduces casting or channeling time lost when damaged by 35/70% when casting any Shadow spell while in Shadowform."
So, are we getting 140% pushback resistance (!) in shadowform, or again, just something they've "forgotten" to remove.

- Shadow power - tooltip exactly the same. Which is fine, except - no mention of Mind Spike ? I find it pretty hard to believe that it would just be left out of 100% crit damage bonus.

- Quote from Blizzard on the class preview:
"All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately."
Which is fine, as it's scaled back the shadowform tooltip. However, no mention of dots benefitting from a 100% crit modifier in either the tooltip or that message. Are all dots getting baseline 100% crit damage modifier, or is it something they've left out again ?

Just some examples from the shadow tree that I've noticed.

I know it's not a massive deal, and it's alpha or whatever which is a really early stage, but it just seems kinda pointless to do a half-hearted job at something and release it. But perhaps I'm missing something here ?

[Banzubie]

Its just another preview, something fun and interesting to look at.

[ComputerNerd]

They are still at an early stage yes, but they are bothering to give us this information so we can be well informed on the progress and to open them up to discussion.
I would rather have work in progress than complete silence until the "near finished" releases which once the opinions of the community are taken into acount are bound to see a load of changes suddenly prompting complaints about that.

[KinzoX]

Why to release this? To keep us with this "drug", giving us some teases just so we still keep thinking on WoW every day and never stop playing it. That's why.

[Ofmanv]

After all that talk about removing passive talents and replacing them with more active, interesting ones, most all of them are still there.

I was getting really excited from some of the trees people were showing on War Tools, they looked so official and actually expressed the design philosophies Blizzard spoke about.

Imo, Blizz go look at some of the ideas other people have out there, and don't show us any more talent trees until these trees are what was promised.

[GuyWithFace]

Nearly all of the changes in the previews are old news anyway. If you know how to use Google, at least.

But yeah, it's still very early. If you check the little "Blizzard" talent at the bottom-right of the trees, these are apparently their first passes. I'm sure there'll be *a lot* more passes during beta.

[Cambridgeworks]

I don't know what beta is! HURRR DERRRP

[KresnikHellfire]

After all that talk about removing passive talents and replacing them with more active, interesting ones, most all of them are still there.

This is kind-of a better way of expressing what I was trying to say. Pretty much that.

To the person above especially (and anyone else who doesn't quite get what I'm saying): yes I realise it's alpha (not beta yet), and there's plenty of changes to come.

But "plenty of changes" shouldn't include changes they stated ages and ages ago that were the very things they wanted to improve, such as passive talents such as darkness.

Why specifically state that it's a boring talent and you want to remove it, then release your first talent tree without any changes to it ?

Meh.

Edit: And if people like me can spot just silly wording errors, like adding mind spike to shadow power - or someone at mmo champ notices wording errors in say, riptide's tooltip, why can't someone at Blizzard HQ spot this ? Its not a massive deal but for a billion dollar company you'd think they'd manage to have a person or two checking these things.

[GuyWithFace]

This is kind-of a better way of expressing what I was trying to say. Pretty much that.
...[trimmed]...

I'm not Blizzard, so I don't know for sure, but it looks to me like they wanted to give each tree it's own new focus first-and-foremost(Shadow Orbs for Shadow, Chakra for Holy, etc) before going back and removing all of the boring talents to balance around them.

[Fenixdown]

The leak was to show off a couple of ideas for new talents. These things aren't even remotely close to complete.

At least I hope not...or discipline's going back to the dark ages of being a "PvP only" spec again. : /

[Vook]

I don't know what Alpha is! HURRR DERRRP

fix'd

[wadark]

World of Warcraft - the only community that begs for updates and then complains when we get them...sheesh.

[sicness]

This is kind-of a better way of expressing what I was trying to say. Pretty much that.

To the person above especially (and anyone else who doesn't quite get what I'm saying): yes I realise it's alpha (not beta yet), and there's plenty of changes to come.

But "plenty of changes" shouldn't include changes they stated ages and ages ago that were the very things they wanted to improve, such as passive talents such as darkness.

Why specifically state that it's a boring talent and you want to remove it, then release your first talent tree without any changes to it ?

Meh.

Edit: And if people like me can spot just silly wording errors, like adding mind spike to shadow power - or someone at mmo champ notices wording errors in say, riptide's tooltip, why can't someone at Blizzard HQ spot this ? Its not a massive deal but for a billion dollar company you'd think they'd manage to have a person or two checking these things.

You say you realize it's in alpha stages yet do you really realize that? I mean come on, of course things aren't nearly what they're going to be changed to yet all you can do is point out what isn't changed yet? You ever think that before they get rid of the 'useless' talents they want to implement the fun talents and this is what they're showing off right now?

Christ... people always find something to bitch about.

[Deleted]

Alright, so I just stumbled upon the new Cataclysm calculator for, in particular, priests.

I have to say they've changed quite a lot and I'm really excited about what looks to be an effort to bring a Smite DPS priest into the game, for real.

I came up with this spec for PVE - http://www.wowtal.com/#k=d0OZvFRVDmYL5qS.9dw.priest

Perhaps it's not perfect, but it includes the talents that would be of best use for a Holy DPS priest, grabbing a couple of healing talents along the way for support as well.

I doubt it's going to be as effective a spec as shadow, but it looks quite promising actually.

What do you think? Discuss.

Edit: Noticed that it added 6 talent point into the disc tree, making it a build for level 91... just remove all the points at the same tier, and below, of Power Infusion.

Edit 2: Was originally its own topic, hence the structure of my post being that of a regular OP.

[Tezmata]

I know it's still a bit early to do detective work or gripe about these talents, but here are a few things that I've noticed:

1.) Archangel seems strange since it's in a line with two talents that increase DPS, and then consumes those effects to increase healing. It leads me to believe that Discipline is going to be the more PvP-oriented spec (or at least will have a clear-cut PvP build). Going further into the tree (and even a bit in Holy), it looks like Discipline priests are going to benefit from casting Smite (Atonement even lets Smite become a heal).

2) Blizzard has all these abbreviations but doesn't use many of them. It seems like TBR (To Be Redesigned/Removed) should be on most of the talents; otherwise it indicates that they're here to stay as-is.

3) Chakra after Lightwell? Really? Making Lightwell mandatory for Chakra isn't going to make people use it. It's just going to gimp one point from Holy priests.

4) Why change the name on Serendipity and then add the NNF (Name Not Final) tag? Why wouldn't they just keep it as Serendipity if they don't like their own new name?

5) It seems incredibly difficult to move far down into the two healing trees (especially Holy) without taking some talents that either increase the damage you deal or reduce the damage you take. This leads me to believe that they're following through with their plan to make health pools larger and to distribute damage a little more throughout the party/raid.

6) Not only does Surge of Light no longer affect Flash of Light, but now it affects Holy Nova. This means Holy Nova is likely to have a cast time. Interestingly enough, Improved Holy Nova contradicts this, lowering its "global cooldown." I guess we'll just have to see on this one what it means. Renew's "Chakra state" also lowers a "global cooldown" (for Renew, of course).

7) Chakra doesn't claim to include Smite, yet there is a Smite "Chakra state." This is likely just an oversight, though I'm interested to see which way it goes.

Again, it's very early but that doesn't mean that every talent is going to drastically change. This build is 100% done for every spec except Holy (95%), so they're at least fairly certain that they want the concepts to stay on most of the talents. I'm eager to see where things are going and figure out all the new intricacies of my favorite class!

[Neichus]

If I had to guess, I'd say that Blizzard isn't relegating Discipline to PvP. That would be a step backward from the direction they've been taking things.

What I see is them experimenting in Discipline with the idea of a damage/healer. The topic has come up repeatedly over time from various fans and Blizzard has expressed that while it's an interesting idea, they're hesitant because while some might find it "exciting" others may be less inclined to play that sort of a healer. So now they have a new expansion and they can test this idea. Priests are the natural class to pick because they already have two healing trees; if you don't like being a "battle priest" you only have to respec, not reroll (although thematically the idea fits Paladins more). And Discipline is in turn the natural tree to experiment with since it has always had that split damage/healing utility to it since it was the off-tree for both Holy and Shadow.

So when I look at Archangel I see the fact that it restores 3-15% of your total mana every 15 seconds. This is mana recouped from the fact that you've used mana to cast Smite repeatedly, which even with the new Atonement is going to be a very inefficient way to heal anybody. In turn Archangel grants you a bonus to healing, although the duration is unclear. So I see it sort of like the present Serendipity where you have a "charging" phase followed by an "overload" of sorts, except it's far more extreme than in the case of present healing styles.

The biggest question I have is how they're going to possibly justify the damage output. I don't know how much damage a healing-oriented Disc Priest could deal, but unless it's at or below the average tank DPS it's going to raise the question of how it balances out. I view this especially from a 10man raiding PoV, which will become far more common in Cataclysm, where one of your healers being able to chip in DPS is quite significant. All in all I'm surprised they would even consider taking the spec in that direction, but it's still Alpha so they may just be dabbling.

[Kelesti]

Regarding the Smite talents: It's going to be awesome in PvP, but it's also going to come into effect in PvE.

Go ahead, look at any Arthas kill, normal or heroic. How "Intense" is that damage? It's not. Heroic Arthas has the least amount of healing required, despite its intense length (late phase 2 starts to hurt, but then you're at transition again, and phase 3 is a different ballgame).

Look at your raid now. You bring healers to cover the intense parts, but what do they do between those hard spots? Sit on their asses? Between Chakra, and the Discipline talents, they've given Priests the option to DPS on parts of fights that aren't so intense on healing required. Will it keep pace with Shadow? not likely. Will it give you something to do? Absolutely. Shaman are getting this, through Shocks. Paladins have Crusader Strike, now. So we'll be seeing how all of this can play out.

Don't expect Smite to be end-game viable DPS, but you can expect it to be in alot more talent builds than you see today, just because of the way encounters look to be working.

And that's from PvE, not even PvP.

Regarding the other stuff? We still have placeholders, fillers, NYI's, etc. I wouldn't be too worried. The Resto Shaman still has Intellect -> Spell Power Scaling, which is completely redundant now. The point was "Here, you're getting new things while we still figure out what to do with the old stuff".

Let's just hope they figure out what the frak they're sticking with Lightwell.

[Neichus]

I have to question that they're trying to give ALL healers something to do, Kelesti. Their whole design scheme for healing in Cataclysm is to go back to the days when mana was a major constraint. For months on end Ghostcrawler has made posts about how they really want good healing to be about managing mana by setting up a tension between efficiency and keeping people alive. I can't imagine they'd suddenly throw it out there that, "And oh ya, we expect you to burn mana doing subpar DPS."

[Kelesti]

Conserving mana is one thing. Doing absolutely nothing because you're "conserving" for that hard phase is another.

It's also not going to be quite obvious as to which healer can/should switch off to DPS in the middle of the fight (likely Holy Priest, given Chakra. *hint hint*). I would say that it is definitely going to require balance.

But if you look at it this way, we already burn mana doing sub-par DPS. :P At least now they acknowledge that not everything needs to be "healing intensive omg auras + debuffs + random splash + etc." That's the general feel I get, people's health will be moving around more. We would need to see how this can play out, but it also gives me potential (with people that say "we need 6 healers for this!" and you were perfectly fine with 4. But that's just the trouble maker in me).

Going up against Deathwing, I expect a massive multi-phase battle that takes place in a HUGE environment. I have a feeling that some phases will be harder than others. You'd take 5 or 6 healers to get through that, but during phase 1, and the first half of 2, where healing is so light it's ridiculous, what do you do? Rotations? That's too much like Vanilla, and they want to follow TBC's style.

So either damage needs to ramp up where tanks get 2 shot (what they don't want to happen), or there can/will be "light" phases. I, as a healer, am fine with that. But again, this is nothing more than my personal take on it, and we'd need to see how this can play out, or if it even makes it to beta.

[Tezmata]

Not to mention that Archangel seems to negate the mana cost of Smite entirely. You still need to be mana-conscious with your heals, but Archangel will restore mana at the cost of your Evangelism stacks, PLUS your Smite is healing while it's damaging.