Cataclysm Class & Mastery Systems Update

[TobiasX]

From what I can tell the short version seems to be: "We're making player class talents trees more like the Hunter Pet talent trees". After checking the Hunter Pet talent trees over this actually seems like a good idea.

[Manaspawn]

seems like they are makin this game into somekinda movie you just walk along in... As a mage you either specc frost, fire or arcane, and you are either going to pick the talents for PvE or PvP... like today there wont be a choise but more a "perfect" specc... the talents should all be equally good and you should pick those you like ann not those you need... every1 will be running around with exactly the same gear and the same specc... how personal -.- *sigh*

[TobiasX]

seems like they are makin this game into somekinda movie you just walk along in... As a mage you either specc frost, fire or arcane, and you are either going to pick the talents for PvE or PvP... like today there wont be a choise but more a "perfect" specc... the talents should all be equally good and you should pick those you like ann not those you need... every1 will be running around with exactly the same gear and the same specc... how personal -.- *sigh*

It was like that in Burning Crusade.
It was like that in Wrath of the Lich King.
It'll almost certainly be like that in Cataclysm.
It was probably like that in Vanilla among the raiding community.
The reason is the existence of sites like ElitistJerks and players have becoming more professional about their choice of spec (e.g. you pick the CC spec because everybody else does).

[delage35]

I don't see anything wrog with cherry picking. Nothing blizzard does will ever remove players from doing that. Anything competitive requires it.

Silly rabbit, blizz can certainly remove the cherries any time they want to. I don't think they've gone quite that far yet, but they've moved most of sweet ones out of reach.

[Orinoco]

Brilliant idea I reckon, so long as it can be pulled off the way Blizzard are hoping. I did like the idea of having a spec that was roughly 50/50 between two trees but loosing that is worth it if we get rid of most mandatory talents and gain plenty of way to personalise our own specs.

[Sycobob]

This sounds awesome. I'm stoked.

[GrandpaYassy]

Silly rabbit, blizz can certainly remove the cherries any time they want to. I don't think they've gone quite that far yet, but they've moved most of sweet ones out of reach.

When i say cherry picking i mean picking the best. This change will do absolutely NOTHING to limit cherry picking in a competitive environment. With rated BG's coming into play it only promotes cherry picking more. So no, blizzard cant remove the cherries. There will ALWAYS be a best spec. And players will discover it, and copy eachother over it.

[Sonoka]

I'm predicting the following specialization abilities

Druid:
Balance - Typhoon
Feral - Mangle
Resto - Tree of Life

Hunter:
Beast Mastery - Bestial Wrath
Marksmanship - Chimera Shot (aimed shot baseline)
Survival - Wyvern Sting

Mage:
Arcane - Slow
Fire - Living Bomb
Frost - Water Elemental

Paladin:
Holy - Holy Shock
Prot - Holy Shield
Ret - Divine Storm

Priest:
Disc - Penance
Holy - Guardian Spirit
Shadow - Mind Flay

Rgoue:
Assassination - Mutilate
Combat - Blade Flurry
Sub - Hemorrhage

Shaman:
Elemental - Thunderstorm
Enhancement - Duel Wield
Resto - Earth Shield

Warlock:
Affliction - Unstable Affliction
Demonology - Felguard
Destruction - Chaosbolt

Warrior:
Arms - Mortal Strike
Fury - Bloodthirst
Prot - Shield Slam

Rogue Sub = Shadow Step
Paladin Holy =/= Holy Shock, that will be a baseline spell.
Warlock Demo, NOT felguard, maybe soul link.
Blizz said they don't want locks running around with Felguards in level 10 if they havn't even learned voidwalker yet.
Else, pretty good speculations.

[Skulver]

I think there is room for "interesting" talent choices that don't have to impact your dps/tanking/healing.

I have a warlock as one of my alts and I could see choosing between Shadowfury, and Nether Protection as an interesting choice. Neither is going to directly increase my dps but both provide useful utility in both PvP and raids. I could also see things like IMP soul leach having their personal benefit separated from the raid buff by either just removing it or moving it into a separate talent. Do I take this useful but possibly redundant raid buff talent for 1 point or pick up one of the previously mentioned talents. These are interesting and meaningful choices that won't have a cookie cutter, this is the best dps option.

With out having seen the talent tree's it's hard to condemn them as being either pointless or cookie cutter.

Thats fine, but it is a subjective definition of interesting (which is the entire problem with this whole endeavour from the start). Blizzard seem to have gotten it into their heads that talents are only interesting if they change how an ability works. There is a whole seperate school of thought that it is interesting if it makes you more effective at what you want to do. The proliferation of cookie cutter specs would tend to suggest that the majority of WoWs player base are of the latter opinion.

To use a simple analogy, Blizzard would think paddle gears on a car are interesting because they change how you shift gears. To a race driver they are only interesting if they allow you to drive faster, that they change the mechanism is irrelevent.

[Bynde]

For those of you who fail at literacy, some copy-pasta

How big are the new trees?
They have 38-42 or so points in them. You could spend all 41 points in one tree, though often you'll want a 5/5/31 or a 0/7/34 build instead. Every talent is 1, 2 or 3 talent points. Earlier levels have about 8 points on them (typically a 2, 2, 3) and deeper levels have about 5 points on them (typically a 1, 2, 3).

How anyone could have read that as "The new trees are only going to have 31 points in them so everyone will be the same" is beyond me.

Also; I love this change, but that's only because I have at least a rudimentary level of reading comprehension (A clear advantage to the average internet hate machine)

[Blur4stuff]

Can't wait to see more info on this. I don't think it will necessarily make leveling easier. It's already pretty damn easy. I think it will do more for making the leveling process more interesting and fun. Let's face it. You can kill mobs in a handful of seconds now and that won't really change even if you get a scaled down version of some high level ability.

[Bucky Mclachlan]

For those of you who fail at literacy, some copy-pasta



How anyone could have read that as "The new trees are only going to have 31 points in them so everyone will be the same" is beyond me.

Also; I love this change, but that's only because I have at least a rudimentary level of reading comprehension (A clear advantage to the average internet hate machine)

You misunderstand, the people QQing are saying that there will be virtually no difference between specs, and that's completely valid. All the things that every class and spec needs they're now getting for free. There's no point in being able to make choices when those choices won't really matter, and having a wiggle room to put 31 points however you want in a tree with only 42 points isn't much room for costumization at all.

Lets hope the new glyph system will help put in more personal favor to our builds while this system is failing to do so on it's own.

[Kitoya]

Why dont we just give everybody just all talents so we have nothing to worrie about.

[Bynde]

You misunderstand, the people QQing are saying that there will be virtually no difference between specs, and that's completely valid.

How is that "completely valid"? Have you seen the new trees? The people QQing are doing so blind. Granted, the people praising the move are also doing so blind, but the overwhelming number of the QQ posts (I couldn't sleep last night and read all of them; some of which by the way did directly say that there was only 31 points, hence my post) are people who blatantly didn't read the content, or at very least didn't understand it. Any one of them could be countered by quoting the text they're so upset about, hence my illiteracy comment. I didn't say all people who are crying said there's only 31 points in the tree, but again; that comes back to reading comprehension.

All the things that every class and spec needs they're now getting for free. There's no point in being able to make choices when those choices won't really matter, and having a wiggle room to put 31 points however you want in a tree with only 42 points isn't much room for costumization at all.

There will still be very attractive talents that probably everyone takes, but there are also definitely choices where you can only take A or B and want both. Typically you might see a useful (but not necessarily dps-enhancing) ability in your own tree, but also a really attractive one in another tree.

This is a good thing. It won't surprise me to see a knee jerk reaction from some players that we're removing their favorite talents and "dumbing down the trees." However, I'd challenge them that there can't be that many players out there that play Arcane because of Mind Mastery or Arms warrior because of Strength of Arms. Yet, if you skip either of those talents, you're just making your character less effective.

[Ishmad]

No.. No..

[Wolfshadow80]

Dammit i was hoping the talents wud be liek they are set up on mmo right now that way i can get boomkin AND TREEFORM!! sadface, still a good idea tho, with less talent desicions it seems pvp will be more about skill! nvm itll be all BGs =(

[finchna]

so how far away time-wise is the Cata release? they don't know what they're doing with feral druids? i guess i shouldn't expect anything different given how they've treated ferals in the past.

[Maewen]

come on blizz

show us new talent trees!

[cerbul]

Is funny to see that actualy alot of ppl don't understand the fact that "new talent trees will make leveling easyer" actualy means that the 31 points unlock idea is there to make sure that actualy the first 2 tiers ONLY from all 3 talent trees are available to take whatever the spec you chose. This can make important talents like the 31 and 41 point talents, available earlyer in the leveling for the simple fact that no one can reach an 11 point talent from a tree if they spend most of their points in the other tree.
This means that 11 points might be equivalent of level 21 in future, while ppl were able to take important talents at level 51 only..

Let me give you an example as it is at the moment. Blizzard doesn't want the shockadin spec to be viable, therefore they don't allow us to take both holy shock and crusader strike at the same time. This is achieved by the fact that 31 points needed for holy shock + 41 points needed for crusader strike = 72. And since we have only 71 points available means we will never be able to get both.

Now same goes for Cataclysm. Since we need 31 points spend in one tree to unlock the other tree, means that we will have 10 points available to spend wherever we want. And that allows for Blizzard to put powerfull talents starting from point 11 in talent trees, since they are not available for other specs to take anyway.

So yes, I do think that this will be a good move from Blizzard in making classes more balanced. Also this has a great impact on allowing PVP being Balanced easyer, and not force the PVE talents in the trees being arranged based on pvp priorities. The changes they did actualy allow for a really free positioning of pve talents, and PVP talents won't stay in the way that much anymore.