Cataclysm Class & Mastery Systems Update

[Vehemence]

All this information is very....

Vague.

Why so Vague?

[Muelleimer]

that makes me want to cry, really bad news

[Deleted]

But removing "boring" talents and, thus, leaving 31-point talent trees is just.... removing "boring" talents. What's the point in that? Let us spend our points wherever we want, don't just restrict us.

The point was to change boring talents for fun ones, but now, they're just removing boring talents... I'd expect better from blizz.

You can't really expect them to have 51 cool talents for each tree. It's unreasonable. I'd rather the trees be smaller but have every talent be interesting than 50+ talents with 20-30 of them be akin to 'reduces mana cost of X by Y%' talents.

Concept is a cool one, lets see how they fare with it.

[evan_s]

Pretty major change. Hard to say how it is going to end up because it is such a major change and we will have to wait and see what the trees look like and what abilities are automatic etc. I am not too surprised tho. Of the 3 classes I play, 2 have had some decent amount of changes in their talent trees already and they both struck me as rather underwhelming. Removing the "boring" talents seemed to kill a lot of the synergy that was available in your secondary tree. Even going up the main tree you seemed to be so lean on talents that you ended up with a cookie cutter build because there were just so few talents that were worth taking that you all ended up with the same thing after avoiding the PVP talents etc.

[Albert the fish]

this is actually a very interesting idea and i'm anxious to see it in work

[Groyg573]

So we're basically doing 31/21/0 ish specs? Or are they reducing the talent points we get per level?

they are indeed reducing the amount per level. at 85 you will have 41 points to spend/spent, so a tree would look like 31/10/0 or 31/5/5 for example.

anyways, i like the change.

[kapowaz]

I think this sounds brilliant. One of the biggest problems I always found when I level a new class is that I feel unable to weigh up the benefits of a given talent at the earliest tiers without an idea of what my final spec will be like, and for that I always end up referring to external sources like Elitist Jerks. Hopefully this will make taking talents feel far less of a straitjacket and more focused into the kind of a <class> that you want to be.

[Futhark]

release the trees

[Elothie]

Anything new and exciting is welcomed by me.I trust their way of making things fun and I am sure that by these things they are looking for Cata the game will be refreshed from the 5-6years old 'design' and talents.

[injury]

It's interesting I suppose. It will take away a lot of the uniqueness that was possible (notice I said possible not optimal) before in any given spec. I imagine it's so they'll have less unknowns to balance which I guess is good. This and the realID announcement yesterday just seem like complete 180's of what Blizzard used to say. "We don't want you to feel you have to pick X, we want variety" to now "Well if you want to play in the spec then you gotta get all of these then you can spend leftovers elsewhere".

[Absolut]

Very interesting! I really want to see this in action. Even though locking your first 31 points feels a bit confined, I think it'll help ppl stay in line with how they're supposed to be specing their class.

[Tziva]

This sounds cool to me.

Having less talent points to spend isn't tragic if there are less talents overall, and having less talents isn't sad as long as the ones they're removing are the genericy gain X damage Y crit Z haste ones. I'd welcome the opportunity to have more utility talents because some of my DPS increasing talents became passive.

Also, hooray to getting core spec abilities early for choosing that talent tree. Being an assassination rogue without mutilate, or an enhance shaman without dual-wield, or a shadow priest without shadowform, has always been frustrating for those first forty levels.

Also, it is a very small change but:

When players reach level 10, they are presented with basic information on the three specializations within their class and are asked to choose one.

Is a great and much-needed change. I have long lamented the fact that there is very little in-game that explains talent trees adequately for new players, and there's actually nothing that tells you you ever have them if you're not the kind of person who tends to "explore" by talking to NPCs and checking their options. Most of us began playing because of friends so it's not an issue for us, but really new players who maybe don't know anyone, it is. I didn't realise this myself until my father and uncle began playing together and I checked up on them at level 30 and saw neither had spend any talent points. Oops.

[Deleted]

Next thing to do is remove hell of a lot of abilities and specialize every class more than now.
Cataclysm shines on what we are told, cant wait to see what we get in the end.

[Necrotica]

This is all moot if they don't do something about the privacy issues with Real ID

[Butterbumps]

Does this mean that there will be no tanks or healers until level 70? Who is going to level a Warrior as Prot? I see big problems coming because of this change.

You obviously haven't leveled a warrior recently... Prot is the best leveling spec, even if you aren't tanking dungeons, and getting Shield Slam at level 10(!) is only going to make it better.

[Shefu]

i see they are learning from other mmo's.....cough aion cough

[Hokuto]

I welcome this change. AT LONG LAST those boring "increases your <spell's name> damage by 1%" will go away.

Oh yes Genesis, I'm looking at you.

[Drefanator]

Does this mean that there will be no tanks or healers until level 70? Who is going to level a Warrior as Prot? I see big problems coming because of this change.

I'd level a warrior as prot. It's easily the fastest leveling spec atm. Revenge is OP.


It's definitely interesting. Can't go either way on this decision. I'm just worried about those specs where all 3 specs are very very similar (Hunters/Rogues... Yes I know there are differences in play styles, but not enough) How are they going to make each spec feel like their own little snowflake. It seems that getting rid of most of the passive talents may just leave some specs empty husks with filler. Sadly that filler is usually the passive talents. So idk.

[Elrid]

After the RealID debacle, I actually think this is a good announcement. I hate the talent trees as they are right now.

[Ryme]

Wow... so talent specs are gone? Just pick a tree and watch it fill? That is a horrible, horrible idea. Fuck this game.