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Worldofraids.com
Why does Mastery rating exist? (Source)
Mostly because we wanted a new stat on gear. Currently there isn't much to compete with haste vs. crit, especially once things like mp5 and arpen are gone and non-healers won't want Spirit.
We also thought having a new stat would help make the Cataclysm gear seem more interesting instead of just bigger numbers from your current gear. We met a lot about it and finally decided the best way to introduce a new stat that everyone would want would be for it to do different things for every spec.
The new trees: total points, points-per-tier and points-per-talent (Source)
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).
Points to advance to the next tier of the tree (Source)
Five to advance to the next tier. We experimented with other numbers, but 5 is just a really simple number upon which to do math.
Unannounced signature abilities (Source)
4. Can we get a sneak peek at which other abilities are becoming base line? Moonkin Form, Tree of Life, Hammer of Righteousness, Bestial Wrath?
We're not ready to announce them all yet, but I will give you a hint that you're 0 for 4 with the ones you mentioned.
The new talent trees pretty much put us back at vanilla? (Source)
They look superficially like vanilla talent trees, but they are far more interesting.
Almost without exception, the talents we cut were the ones everyone took or the ones nobody took. 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.
A Cataclysm goal is to remove lame or boring talents. Yet we don't want to replace all of those with procs or game-changers. Really the only solution is to have smaller trees where nearly every remaining talent is a big deal.
Spending points in a second tree (Source)
You typically won't get active abilities from a second tree. The most you can get in a second tree is 10 points, and usually the active abilities are deeper than this. We think it makes the distinction between say a Frost and Unholy DK more pronounced when all of their talented active abilities are different rather than being able to cherry pick the best from each tree. It does end up killing any chance for a build that goes halfway down two trees, but usually we would consider such builds failures because it meant the bottom of "your" tree wasn't good enough. These were most popular in PvP when players felt compelled to get "must have" PvP survival talents in multiple trees, and those are the kind of talents we want dead anyway.
With these changes though, the talent trees are going to be even more rebuilt than we were already planning with Cataclysm. Talents are moving all over the trees and every tree has new talents as well. We'll give you a chance to see the trees soon ™.
How often will we get talent points? (Source)
About one every other level, but there are some exceptions. We are trying to alternate new abilities and talent points where possible. You will have 41 talent points at 85.
Healer signature abilities (Source)
We think healers will expect to get an actual heal (or some kind of defensive ability) as their signature spell, but we also want something that's actually useful at level 10. Lightwell, Circle of Healing and even Spirit of Redemption are very signature Holy abilities, but none are very useful when soloing gnolls in Elwynn.
Will talents that improve specific abilities be baked into the ability? (Source)
It depends. Improved Mortal Strike for example is gone and that's just the way Mortal Strike hits now (we added the damage and cooldown into MS). Improved Lava Lash is still around because it plays off of Searing Flames.
1H/2H options for Frost and Fury (Source)
We are keeping 2H and 1H versions of Frost and Fury. Those talents change your playstyle in pretty significant ways so we think they qualify as interesting.
Death Knight
When does this system start working for Death Knights? (Source)
When they get their first talent point for completing a quest.
Unholy changes (Source)
Looking at Unholy, talents like Impurity, Desolation, Wandering Plague, Crypt Fever (but not Ebon Plaguebringer) and Rage of Rivendare (sad about the lore hit there) are gone.
Druid
So no Eclipse mechanic for Balance until 78? (Source)
We'll probably give them the "balance bar" for picking Balance at level 10, then at level 78 you get the ability to affect the bonus damage from the bar by increasing your mastery stat.
Feral spec and Omen of Clarity (Source)
Feral is a challenge. We still want to have a cat-centric, bear-centric or hybrid build. It has always been one of the more challenging trees to work on.
Likewise, we're not sure what we'll do with Omen yet. The obvious choices are leave it Resto only, put it high enough for everyone to subspec or make it a trained ability.
Dual-spec will work pretty much like it does today. You can have 2 Feral builds or 1 Feral, 1 Resto build or whatever you'd like.
Mage
Frostfire Bolt (Source)
Yet, you designed the awe-inspiring Frostfire Bolt spell specifically to do this. Forcing us to take 31 pts in one tree before putting points into another completely kills the FFB spec. It also would seem to make FFB a completely useless spell. Any chance that we'll see some changes to it?
I wouldn't say that worked out so well though, certainly not enough to make it a model for talent tree design for other classes.
We still have a soft spot for Frostfire Bolt though, and at the moment there is a talent in Frost that lets you be the FFB mage.
Paladin
Divine Storm (Source)
Divine Storm is a big deal because Retribution paladins get it at level 10. You'll get a new bottom o' the tree talent.
Design intent of Retribution (Source)
I'm personally not a fan of "You need some easy classes," nor do I think defensive hybrids work. Ret paladins should feel like Arms warriors who trade off some of their mobility for healing and defenses, and do more Holy damage instead of bleed damage.
Priest
Shadowform at level 10? (Source)
We really wanted to do this, but the more we thought about it, what does a level 10 Shadowform do? Spam Shadow Word: Pain? We'll probably give Shadow priests Mind Flay at level 10 and let them get Shadowform shortly after that.
Holy talent changes (Source)
Holy would lose or have significant changes made to the following talents: Searing Light, Holy Focus, Empowered Healing, Divine Accuracy, Improved Renew, Improved Healing, Healing Prayers, Holy Reach, Improved Holy Nova, Thriving Light and Divine Providence.
Good guesses. Honestly it was kind of fun pruning the talent trees for this overhaul because it was surprisingly easy to pick out the talents that had to go and often cathartic to delete them. One of the hardest decisions was deciding what to push up to the first couple of tiers and rectifying that with what you get at which level.
Empowered and Improved Healing are still around (in slightly altered form) but available to Disc. We kept Improved Holy Nova and might keep Improved Renew because we want Holy to be good at Renew. The others, unless I am mistaken, were destroyed in the Cataclysm.
Rogue
Shadowstep will be inaccessible to other specs? (Source)
Inaccessible. Shadowstep is essentially no longer a talent. There is nowhere to buy it. You don't get any passive bonuses for picking your second tree. Essentially you choose at level 10 whether to be an Assassination, Combat or Subtlety rogue, and while you can change your mind later, that determines what special ability and what passives you get.
Warlock
Demonology's signature ability (Source)
It probably won't be Felguard. It's a little odd to spring that on a warlock that doesn't even have a Voidwalker yet.
Any chance of some Warlock tree details? (Source)
Warlocks are hard.
With a mage, you can keep Frost from throwing a lot of Fireballs just by making Frost do Frost damage. The warlocks don't have schools like that, and they have some shared spells, so it's tricky to get them to use the spells we want them to use sometimes. None of the cool talents, the ones that change up what you're doing, such as Molten Core or Backdraft, are going away.
Warrior
The newer new Arms (Source)
Mastery still exists, but the design is a little cleaner.
Before:
Arms got some passive damage per talent point.
Arms got some passive armor pen per talent point.
Arms got a chance to proc a swing per talent point, which is enhanced by mastery rating on gear.
Now:
Arms gets whatever it needs as passives at level 10.
Arms gets a chance to proc a swing at level 78(ish), which is enhanced by mastery rating on gear.
Mastery now means "proc a swing" for Arms and that's all it means, which is easier to understand.
Arms passives (Source)
Since they are already percentages, they already scale. The Arms one for the moment is Two-Handed Weapon Spec (+10% damage with two-Handed weapons) and Anger Management (free rage). They aren't always existing talents though. I would not focus too much on the old masteries, except for the third one that scales with gear. That one is still around.
Shield Slam as the only "signature ability" for Protection (Source)
One. Protection warriors get Shield Slam (and Arms and Fury lose it). Devastate is still an attractive talent deep in the tree, but it doesn't say "Prot warrior" the way Shield Slam does.
Protection talents and passives (Source)
Deflection is gone. Protection has one passive talent, which is Toughness. They get Vitality as a passive for choosing Protection at level 10. The other talents are a mix of threat and defensive abilities, but none are as passive as Deflection. There are (hopefully) attractive talents in the first two tiers of Arms and Fury. The other tank trees will be similar but not identical (Feral as always will be the least similar).
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