Sloppily released talent trees ?

[Parthanon]

I hope these mentions of mana costs are mistakes, as things like Lightwell costing costing 6177 mana is a bit of a steep climb from the current 340 odd. Also, Power Word: Barrier costing 13383 mana, that's about half of someone's mana pool (okay about a 3rd of really well geared raid buffed disc priest). Seems a bit steep, even for an "Oh Sh!t" spell, which since it's on a 3 min cooldown, doesn't really qualify for anyway.

And Chakra only seems to benefit Heal, not Binding, Flash or Greater... Still no tank healing for Holy then I guess.

Improved Spirit Tap - Requires 3 points in Spirit Tap.... Erm, where is it?

[Neichus]

Well, I think phases will also play out differently. Right now we can heal a player to full in...what? 2 spells? A few more if it's a tank.

Blizzard has mentioned in Cataclysm they want less of the bouncing up and down, with larger health pools and greater possibility of death by attrition rather than death by burst. An intense healing phase in that paradigm doesn't have to be one that will annihilate the raid in 3 seconds if they don't receive healing, and so requires all healers chugging away to keep people alive. It can be one that presents a level of damage intake that requires an unsustainable amount of healing. You could use 4 healers and they'd possibly even be able to keep the raid alive through it, but because they were forced into using inefficient heals and just having to do more individual healing they won't last the rest of the fight.

In that situation a light phase is a chance to top everybody back up using the most efficient means available to regenerate before the next bout of damage. You're not doing nothing, but you're definitely not going to feel inclined to keep burning mana like it's an intense phase. For Discipline it might be more inclined to use its damage-oriented mechanics with Archangel during these phases, while sticking to more traditional healing during intense phases. I just don't see the mechanics there to make that an attractive option for other specs is all.

[Danner]

I really really like the new smite talents. It's almost as if you can add a smite build. I know of one priest that is pleased with having an alternative to shadow!

I don't think you can add a smite build on top of a healing build however. I mean, you would ultimately choose between archangel or PW: Barrier anyway. It's not going to help healers a lot.

Also: I love the reshuffling of the holy priest talents.
I hate the "new PVP" of the holy priest talents. They're just crap.

Also: What's up with the "Blessed Reslience does not stack with Focused Will" and viec versa? Those two talents doesn't do anything similar, and considering their location, I don't think you can get both...

Now, it's a work in progress; but here's to the healing part of the trees (yes, I know it's a minor point - I mean, point me at any disc/holypriests actually healing... ? ) getting the same love as a smiter just did

[Kelesti]

And Chakra only seems to benefit Heal, not Binding, Flash or Greater... Still no tank healing for Holy then I guess.

"Heal" is the primary heal we'll be using for Tank Healing. Where were you for the class previews? I mean, all four healer previews have talked about this.

Flash = Fast + Expensive
Heal = Cheap, moderate speed, efficient
Greater Heal = Slow, Huge, faster than 2 heals (also expensive).

Apply the same to Shaman, Paladins, and Druids through variations of their spells, and you have what it takes to tank heal now.

If your "main spell" is the only one on Chakra, would you rather that, or would you prefer it to be one of the ones you shouldn't be using often or repetitiously?

5% crit on Heal is meh, but crit will be useful come Cataclysm because it won't always be overheal, and can be counted on as potential thoroughput (because you won't be topping people off). The refresh on Renew is the real keeper though. Not spending a Global Cooldown to keep up your strongest buffer? Yes please.

[pomop]

I remember seeing the shaman enhance talents in the time that we are not allowed to speak of due to a certain NDA agreement on MMO-champion. There were more enhance shaman changes that were shown that aren't even listed on the front page.

edit - I know this had nothing to do with priests, but I'm just saying that in the time that we are currently unable to talk about, there were changes to classes (Notably shaman, my main) that aren't being shown in the preview. Who knows why? :S

[G l o w y r m]

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.

WHAT? Why not? You have no clue what it takes to make a game like this. Just because they stated something they wanted to do a long time ago does NOT mean they should be all done with it by now, that makes no sense.

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 ?

First of all, these are not "released talent trees". It's a preview, you know that. That means whatever they have had time to change, they are showing you, the rest is just there. And yes there ARE changes.

What you're saying is like if I was painting your car red, I show you HALF WAY through the paint job and you say, "why is the other half black still? wtfz?".

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.

The talent calculator IS NOT MADE BY BLIZZARD. Read the blue text PREVIEWS, if you see a typo there, THEN you can say something about it.

[Zhalseran]

As far as I'm concerned, there is only one reason why they even released these talent trees. Alpha leaks. Blizzard really had their hands full with alpha leaks when Wrath came out, and it got really out of hand. This time around they've been a lot more on top of it.

They are putting the information out there of their own accord on purpose. It beats the data miners at their own game, so to speak, by pre-empting them. In this particular case, most of the information seems to be recycled from the info that MMO-Champion originally leaked before they got slapped with the NDA, but thats not the point.

Finally, complaining about the content at this point is more than pointless, its moronic. It's alpha, not even beta yet. Come back in 6 months and if it's still to your disliking, maybe it might make sense to complain.

that said, Blizzard does appreciate all feedback, so make sure to tell them what you think of the new stuff on the official forums.

[Purple]

There are a few things that aren't in these releases as well, and some of the mistakes a few have pointed out, aren't present.. elsewhere. Essentially, what I'm trying to say, is what some of the above have said. This is not a complete form. Don't be downhearted, there is more to come.

[Tablemaker]

Man... I am so getting tired of the World of Warcraft Community. The Shadow Talent Tree is half-assed for a reason. This is what they have changed so far to get the Priest class PLAYABLE ON ALPHA. Notice I did not use the word BETA, instead I used ALPHA. ALPHA is before BETA. Which means it is was earlier in development and completely subject to change.

Blizzard should just NDA everything until the day before patch/expansion to save themsevles from blowhard whiners who will find anything and everything to whine about without using any means of logic in trying to understand why things are currently not the way their whiney little asses want them.

[Maxpowr]

One of the talents I saw that was a bit disappointing was Choir Leader. I would have rather seen a talent like Aspiration in the Disc tree. Unless the fights are much longer than what they are now (>5 mins average) in Cata I don't rally see much use in this talent besides "flavor".

I do find it interesting that they squeeked in that CoH nerf (10 second CD now).

[FrozenFlames]

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 ?

Aw to bad, this were the final talents for cataclysm, it wont be changed anymore......WAIT!?

[Somerandomhobo]

Just a note on dark thoughts, it may not be a talent for deep deep shadow priests.

Its for holy/disc pvp priests.

[Chell82]

Just a thing i`m concerned with i don`t know if it has been mentioned before since i didn`t bother going through all the posts but the thing im not happy with is the conversion of spirit in2 hit... more exactly the low percentage of conversion ...
i mean take boomkins for example ... they get a 4% hit plus another 100% spirit converted to hit rating ... since there`s no longer a spirit buff and adding to that the xtra 5 lvls they`ll be getting , thats gonna be around 200 hit rating ez which frees spot for 2 possibly 3 pieces of gear to be used with crit / haste ... whereas we have.... what 20% spirit converted to hit.

Just think its lol cause we`ll probly gonna end up with another 2 pieces of hit gear as compared to the situation right now where as other classes will be able to drop a lot of theirs

[Chell82]

And has any1 ever considered the fact that with the change to mind melt MF will probly go out of our rotation ... i mean they say that with 3 stacks Mind spike is gonna do about the same as MF with Sw on the target. now maybe i misunderstood and a mind spike will do the same as 1 tick of MF instead of 3 in which case ignore me ... but if its the equivalent of 3 ticks of MF why bother doing mf anymore ? with a 1.5 sec cast on mind spike and an instant MB to back up this choice i would say MF is history

[fabian]

One of the talents I saw that was a bit disappointing was Choir Leader. I would have rather seen a talent like Aspiration in the Disc tree. Unless the fights are much longer than what they are now (>5 mins average) in Cata I don't rally see much use in this talent besides "flavor".

I do find it interesting that they squeeked in that CoH nerf (10 second CD now).

How is it that Blizz sqeeked in the CoH nerf when they did want, and has said they wanted, the CD of CoH and WG to be longer?

[Calippo Man]

Its nerfed so they can shorten it in Chakra. All Chakra does is boost a given spell to what it should be doing in the first place.

[zito]

Sooo I don't know if anyone has noticed but..... new body and soul

[Balance]

I suppose it is meant to kind of give us a look at what were going to be dealing with soon. I was a bit dissapointed by the updates given to us in the shadow tree so right now I'm focusing more on the fact that they seem to be trying to bring smiter dps back.

[llDemonll]

i read none of this thread, but are you really judging blizzard based off alpha / beta / whatever talent trees? these are "far" (some maybe, some maybe not) from final and personally i'm holding off any opinion at least until public beta when the trees will be far more finalized

[Koki]

I remember some blue said that pure casters would only have 150% damage for critical hits with spells, and that 200% critical damage spells was something for hybrids, I guess they meant paladin and deathknights spell damage which is 200% nowadays actually, no clue if they will give enhancement shamans 200% spell crits baseline aswell