Condensed Talent Trees Discussion

[Barky]

What is everybody's opinion on the new condensed talent trees released with the latest beta build? Was it an overall improvement from the old ones? Leave your thoughts here!

Link: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman#,,12479

Personally I like the way the enhancement tree turned out seeing as how we got a new mana regen talent named "Primal Wisdom" which looks like it will be our answer to not having Intellect on our armor anymore, as well as Primal Strikes going from a 40% dmg increase to a 45% dmg increase.

This is an Enhance spec I threw together real quick: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman#Z8-W91oUP,,12479

By the looks of it we keep all of the major talents that we had prior to the overhaul.

You didnt put the 2 points in making ghost wolf instant and +15% run speed? Naughty Shaman!

[Littlenino]

You didnt put the 2 points in making ghost wolf instant and +15% run speed? Naughty Shaman!

I figured it'd be more useful for pvp than it would pve =/

[Darkist]

Very disappointed. Seems like Blizzard did not put any effort into our talents, decided to go easy on themselves and just condensed everything. I don't get any feel of being able to customize, or pick utility along with dps.

I'm confused why certain lame talents still appear....
-Toughness. 10% stam that no one has points for. Should be combined with Elem Warding 6% less dmg.
-Elem Devestation. Melee crit based off spell crit....doesn't make any sense to me. No one at that level even has enough crit to benefit, and at endgame it's good for enhance only.
-We lost Elem Fury which was crucial for enhance.
-We lost Frozen Power.


Only good thing I saw was merging 2 talents into Ancestral Swiftness.

Blizz really let themselves go and it shows in this crap. All this time, money, and "effort" and all we get are gutted trees. =/

Indeed, after wall of blue text about that "we're making trees cool etc" they release old trees, without sometalents so im asking, where is that cool trees?

[Deleted]

Agreed with Darkist. I was expecting "ALL NEW TALENT TREES!!!!" instead its just the same stuff but condenced... yay


Although this is still beta (early beta) so got some hope left ><

[Nielah]

Agreed with Darkist. I was expecting "ALL NEW TALENT TREES!!!!" instead its just the same stuff but condenced... yay


Although this is still beta (early beta) so got some hope left ><

I'm not in the beta, so I wouldn't know! :'[

[Solace]

Yeah, really disappointing. First rounds I suppose. Here's hoping they improve.

[Arinnaya]

Yo guys, I heard these talent trees are completely finalised and won't change at all before Cataclysm ships.

owait.

They have only just announced the cutting down of talents trees, and have released a FIRST VERSION of it. Now begins the process of people TESTING and USING these talent trees, providing FEEDBACK for Blizzard to use to IMPROVE them. The fact is if they'd made a whole load of random new talents it would be a nightmare to get balanced before the game ships in a few months.

The 51-trees to 31-trees is a major change. By keeping mostly existing talents they make it easier to test what works and what doesn't. This is a BETA, things will change.

[koimagheul]

lacks 1 or 2 points to make a perfect enh spec. can't max out everything we need in both ele and enh trees and have one filler point that doesn't do us any good in enh tree.

[Deleted]

This is an Enhance spec I threw together real quick: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?shaman#Z8-W91oUP,,12479

I suspect we'd be better with something like http://www.wowtal.com/#k=Dc_TfZKb.9mn.shaman (although where exactly to put the ele talents I'm not at all sure).

There is a big problem though that needs to be addressed. Try building a tree and you start out easy enough ok 2 in Elemental Weapons 3 in Focused strikes (easy as extra mana isn't helping and looks like a resto/ele filler.

2nd tier - 3 flurry is a given - need 2 more to get to tier 3...both Imp.Shields and Ancestral Swiftness look ok - lets go with 2 pts in Imp.Shields as that's known dps increase.

3rd Tier - Easy enough tier - toughness avoid - Stormstrike a given - 3 static shock a given.

Hmmm now what we are missing a talent point to get to tier 4, ok have to double dip to previous ranks - lets fill out 3rd point in Imp.Shields.

4th Tier - ok avoid Totemic vigor - 3 in Searing Flames is a given and we have 2 pts left to spend. So choice - is Primal Wisdom going to be needed that's a hell of a lot of mana return (40% chance on EVERY melee weapon swing). In WotLK with all the melee attacks you were looking at slightly more than 1 attack per second (lets say 1 attack per second for easy maths) 2pts in Primal Wisdom would be 40% chance of 5% base mana = 2% base mana per second return. At level 80 that's around 88 mana per second or 440mp5 equivalent. That seems very high for Enhance with SR available once per minute.

So lets skip Primal Wisdom for now and hmm ok we need to double dip back again. Only viable choice left given we need to spend 2 points to reach tier 5 is Ancestral Swiftness (we are running out of choices).

That gives http://www.wowtal.com/#k=-w8nkD.9mn.shaman so far.

Tier 5 - Shamanistic Rage and 3 in Unleashed Rage are a given and we are once again short of a point to reach Tier 6 so AGAIN we need to double dip back to previous levels to proceed. The ONLY viable choice left is Primal Wisdom so 1/2 in that to reach Tier 6.

Tier 6 - Both here look mandatory as does 1 pt in Tier 7 - so wait a minute so far I've got

http://www.wowtal.com/#k=-w8n82t.9mn.shaman and the only real choice was that 1 floating point. Not much customisation here.

Ok so lets turn attention to Elemental tree for fillers.

Tier 1 - 3 in Elemental Devastation is a given and to get to Tier 2 - 2pts in Concussion. Convection is a mana talent and not for Enhancement.

Tier 2 - Only 4 points left and so here is the real choice - do we fill out a point in Concussion and take 1/2 in either Imp.Fire Nova or Call of Flame or do we go 2/2 in both and leave 2/3 in Concussion. My guess is that it will be down to working that out in the Sim.

Overall - precious little that could be customised. In Enhance tree we are looking at perhaps 1/2 Ancestral Swiftness 2/2 Primal Wisdom instead but that's about it. Hardly being able to have a handful of talents left over to pick "fun" talents.

It may be wise for someone in US to cross post this concern to the Shaman Forum on the Blizzard US forums, as at present its a very very limiting tree.

[evan_s]

Overall, I agree with Levva. There is almost no choice in the Enhancement tree, as it stands now. I suspect we will want/need 2 points in Primal Wisdom since we will have small mana pools with no Int on our gear. Without any int on our gear we will always be more like we were as fresh 80's before the slow accumulation of Int on our gear grew our mana pool to the point where we didn't need other mana regen/savings talents to last between SR uses.

Doing some quick napkin math assuming any mana used during SR is free because it will just be regened. We should be casting 7 in the 45 seconds between Sr's and they cost 18% of base mana for earth shock and 17% for flame shock. We no longer have our nice talent that halves that. Mental quickness is baseline from picking enhance but only saves 6%. So using 17% as an average after mental quickness that is ~120% of base mana every minute and 1 point of Primal Wisdom will regen 90% of base mana in that time. That leaves ~ 70% of base mana left over assuming we were at FM after SR. Moving on to Storm Strike 8% of base mana x 5 is another 40% of base mana. Lava lash is only 4% of base mana and only 4 casts would be 16% of base mana. Lightning bolt/Lava Blast from MW and Fire Nova are harder to predict but the remain 24% base mana is only enough to cover 4 lightning bolts (6%) or 1 fire nova(22%) which should be pretty easy to hit in 45 seconds.

Since we will be stuck at base mana with no int on our gear, the napkin math seems to point pretty strongly to needing 2 points of Primal Wisdom. Obviously, this isn't as good as a simm would do but it does seem clear enough to draw a conclusion.

[wordup]

Only thing about all these talent tree changes I'm particularly worried about is that elemental fury becomes exclusively for Elemental.

[Fornaw]

Maybe I'm crazy but I don't think anyone has any meaningful choices in their primary tree. There are a few trees where you can choose between pitiful talent #1 and pitiful talent #2 but it feels less like making a decision than it does like finding a spot to put points so you can get to the next tier.

[Phaelix]

Am I the only not seeing the Ele talent Lightning Mastery in the tree anymore? Or is Blizzard implementing some other way? .5 cast time off of LBolt/LvBurst/CL is kinda important...

[violence]

Any PvPer would tell you the current Earthquake is trash. It'll be like a big red sign over our heads that says INTERRUPT ME NOW PLEASE! Des and I debated this the other day (I won lol). Any true PvPer will not channel an AoE in any circumstance. Eles job is to keep pressure high / shear / hex / ground blah blah. We cannot do that if we're channeling a spell.

Here's my idea: Make Earthquake not channeled but rather just have a cast time (like they had briefly before making it channeled). So, say 2 sec cast time. You cast Earthquake on a location on the ground and that ground trembles (mind you this is happening while you are not channeling it), but instead of making it a proc rate on the knockdown just have the last tick of damage knock all enemies down (the last thing we want is another DnD debacle. And I despise RNG spells like Earthquake). That way you can use it proactively or reactively.

For instance, you know a warrior is about to charge you, so you cast Earthquake at your feet and commence with the usual rotation of spells against the warrior. At the same time your enemy can choose to stay in and just deal with the aoe and knockdown at the end, or get out and possibly take the fight elsewhere. It's useful against casters too in that you could cast it at their feet forcing them to decide whether to keep casting at you or move out before the knockback occurs. Either way it's win because if they're moving they're not casting.

You can also make Earthquake do less damage since we'd be able to cast spells while it's happening. It'll act more like an aoe dot.

Can I just say, I think that is an excellent idea Northy. Makes for some much more interesting play as Ele. Makes other players make choices about coming in or moving out of the area. Would love to see this implemented..

[Throdin]

Well what can I say? I'm stumped at Blizzard's choice to devote so much time into condensing the talents trees, as opposed to revamping them with completely fresh and exciting options. Why bother? The whole endeavor just seems pointless.

As an Enhancement Shaman several things stand out as worrying oversights. Our mastery remains +nature damage, that alone is a point of contention. Our mastery involves spell damage and yet we're losing Elemental Fury. 6 points of our tree are devoted to an underpowered totem with the AI of a lobotomized grapefruit which does fire damage.

Shamanistic Rage hasn't been changed, but we've been given Primal Wisdom, replace one altogether or combine the two into one talent, I don't care, but an activated and a passive chance to replenish mana on melee hit? Show some creativity blizzard, for the love of all that is Holy/Earthly/Spirity.

They could have made it so some enhancers focus on elemental damage and mastery, whilst others choose to go physical and windfury, but there will still be a cookie cutter spec with garbage trees like this, there is variation unless you want to be an underperformer, it's changed nothing.

Go back and do it again Blizz, I give you an F+ on this assignment.