"Remove the Bloat" Seems to be a ton at the moment.

[Hardcream]

Obviously beta is beta, but it really seems like a lot of talents and such that they were trying to get rid of because they were uninteresting or didn't really feel like they made good talents IE enhancing talents (Now a fresh one added Totemic Reach) along with still having a few that have existed for us still such as a hit talents which takes 3 points for Shaman and 2 points for Balance druids.

It just seems like them trying to remove fluff and uninteresting things from the trees has them shoving a bunch of uninteresting things in. We still have mp5 talents which is pretty boring.

Anyone else feel that the 31 point trees just are not coming along at all like they had described?

[Phriven]

You're going to have to cite some specifics if you're going to talk about 'talent bloat'.

What about an mp5 talent is bad?

Personally, I find the new trees to be pretty nice.

[evan_s]

The shaman trees do seem to need some work. Looking at the enhancement tree it has 46 points in talents total and you never really have to choose between different utility options as you don't run outta dps options. If you look at the rogue trees, they have 41 or 42 points in the tree and several points where they have to pick between utility talents to keep moving down the tree.

Also the tree doesn't seem to do too well as the secondary tree for elemental or resto anymore. The additional healing/sp from elemental weapons is relatively minor and there is only 4 points in the second tier even if they take the rather underwelming Totemic Reach. At the same time, the first 2 tiers of elemental and resto don't seem to be designed to be appealing to the other tree. Ideally you'd want enough stuff in the lower tiers that appeal to the other specs that the sub-spec isn't a given and you might even see specs like 5/31/5.

It seems like we need some shuffling of existing talents and some slimming of the cost of talents. The first thing that springs to mind for me is pushing elemental devastation up a tier or 2. As a 3 point talent at tier 2, with Flurry also being a 3 point talent, it means we have 6 points of dps talents on the tier and neither has any appeal to a resto or elemental shaman. Swap it with Toughness and drop both it and toughness down to 2 points. In tier 2 you now have 3 points of dps talents and are left considering some extra hps, extra totem range, Ancestral Swiftness or Imp shields for a little bit more dps. It also allows resto and elemental off specs to pick up toughness if they want for a PVP spec.

In tier 3 drop Static shock down to a 2 point talent and you have a nice tier with 5 points of good dps talents.

In tier 4 drop Searing flames down to a 1 or 2 point talent so you only have 3 or 4 points of required dps talents.

Tier 5 is ok with only 4 points of dps talents to pick forcing some utility talents to keep going.

Tier 6 and 7 seem to be ok and match the general pattern of being packed full of good dps talents.

I'd also like to see some of the "utility" talents changed/improved to have a bit more PvE/leveling utility instead of them being primarily PvP talents. (EG Toughtness, Totemic Vigor, Frozen Power and Earthen Power)

TDLR version. We've got way to many talents and too many 3 point talents in the enhancement tree. Need them trimmed of some talents and/or costs reduced.

[Hardcream]

You're going to have to cite some specifics if you're going to talk about 'talent bloat'.

What about an mp5 talent is bad?

Personally, I find the new trees to be pretty nice.

This was more of a post for people who keep up with blue posts and how they planned to manage talents and what they wanted out of the new trees. You can look up the information pretty easily with blue tracker if you are that far behind on the information. mp5 talent is an mp5 talent which is what is wrong with it. It serves no interesting or functional utility which as before constitutes as bloat for Blizzard.

There are a lot of issues atm with the trees, and the over stuffing of talents into the trees right now with the inability to really get some key talents out of other trees is a real ball buster here. It is mainly an observation that the Shaman trees are really poorly implemented and if people tended to notice the same bloat as me instead of a slimming down.

[Taalyn]

The 31 pt trees are coming along well actually. Unfortunately Shamans are coming along less than others. Elemental Reach has to go. It is now the only talent in the beta that increases the range of the caster's spells. All other classes had them removed and the base range of their spells were adjusted. If Blizzard doesn't want to make the radius increase on TS baseline, they can add it to an existing talent like Unrelenting Storm. Unrelenting Storm itself isn't the greatest talent and if we're going to have so much Intellect it's likely going to get changed anyway or we'll have some ridiculous regen.

Restorative Totems should also go, because Blizzard is moving away from buffs buffing buffs. They did it with Paladin blessings and Warrior shouts, they'll likely do it with this talent.

There are other problems with the trees but there is still a lot of time left in the beta, we just have to be patient.

[netwar_]

Having a talent to increase totems effects radius is boring as hell. Why not giving a 40 yards range by default (the best should be 100 yards just like the Paladins auras but hey... we're not the Blizzard's pets) to all buffs totems? Is it that hard to do?

[aether99]

passive talents in enhancement (just as an example), and i wont count the first two tiers since blizzard said to expect passive talents int hem (for subspeccing reasons)

toughness, totemic vigor, unleashed rage are completly passive

toughness is antiquated if nothing else, useless in pve, and barely usefull in pvp. probably should have its movement reduction affect added to a diff talent.

totemic vigor is the exact type of talent they were supposed to avoid, specially this deep in the trees.

unleashed rage people will defend because its usefull, and i cant blame them for it, even if its exactly what they are trying to avoid. Probably should in the least be reduced to 1 talent point.

so all in all not TOO bad with there editing later saying that the first two tiers can be passive talents (because if we counted them, we would have 7 completly passive talents)

all in all not really thrilled with where enh is going, specially with this searing flames/lavalash thing, just something that appears to have no use in pvp and be situational in pve.

makes it easier to figure what points to take out in order to get pvp taletns at least.

[Baabinator]

Note to people: Passive does not mean bad.

Just the talents that add passive stats, passive damage to spells, improvement to buffs are those things to contribute nothing to your rotation/priority/gearing.

..Oh wait... that's half the tree

Enhancement currently has 5 of 20 talents for a total of 14 points which are plain, boring, and all of the above i described. That's 25%...

Elemental on the other hand has 8 of 19 spells which fall under those described above. That's more then ... just fuck that..

[Hardcream]

Enhancement currently has 5 of 20 talents for a total of 14 points which are plain, boring, and all of the above i described. That's 25%...

Elemental on the other hand has 8 of 19 spells which fall under those described above. That's more then ... just fuck that..

Indeed sir indeed. This is pretty funny considering that Ghostcrawler said it was their key goal to remove the "terrible buff a buff" talents from the trees and yet we just get tons and tons of them. I wonder if he has even looked at them yet?

[durza]

its beta shamans will get there turn when they pick your class randomly out of a hat

[Hardcream]

its beta shamans will get there turn when they pick your class randomly out of a hat

That's a problem when they constantly forget to write down Shaman on a piece of paper to put in the hat to begin with.

[Volitar]

After looking threw most of the talent trees i am pretty disappointed with shaman, I read somewhere that shaman tress are one of the most developed which is pretty sad with the way they are...most of the talents are looking almost the same as 3.3.5 just with less things

[Joesgetndown]

Having a talent to increase totems effects radius is boring as hell. Why not giving a 40 yards range by default (the best should be 100 yards just like the Paladins auras but hey... we're not the Blizzard's pets) to all buffs totems? Is it that hard to do?

Auras are 40 yards. Thanks.

[Omanley]

well, i myself get used to see mmo-champ news with all classes listed but shaman ( or huuuuge news for paladins, mages, warlocks, rogues, warriors and druids ) and shaman getting two or so things changed (mostly not impressive changes ).

I also got used to blizzard adressing our concerns once every year ( or every 2nd ), but simply dont do anything against it.

If you´re talking about bloat in classes, you may call our class the "shabloatman".

blizzards big Q&A about shaman during wotlk: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/17730...-series-shaman

[Deleted]

i basically think that the talents in which you have to put all talent points or they are worthless should be 1pointer
examples:
ancestral swiftness (no one wants to have a 1s ghost wolf cast, 8% will be very likely to get as enchant)
frozen power (i would not rely on 50% chance to root)
earthen power (here neither)

[Fornaw]

Part of the problem is that Shaman, and particularly Enhancement, are a unique combination of the horrible design decisions which plague hybrids and pures. Looking over a lot of the trees I see some themes.

First off is that specs who get the majority of their rotation baseline are usually not given 31 points of damage in their trees. This makes sense because a lot of these classes will be able to pick up damage in their subspecs. The primary examples here are pure classes, Combat, Demo and Mage trees especially. I don't know if you've ever leveled a pure class, but it is in many ways an eye opening thing, they have a lot of neat little spells on the trainer many of which you train and never use, think Backstab if you prefer the Combat tree. These specs often play surprisingly similar to how you might play a 0/0/0 except of course that they do a lot more damage.

The second bucket is DKs, Warriors and Druids it's okay to give attacks like Whirlwind to an Arms warrior or Rend to a Fury warrior, they won't use it because of stance restrictions. Realistically they could go even farther and do the same thing for spells like Bloodthirst, they just haven't. Druids of course have the same situation with their forms. DKs have a unique system in runes that essentially ties all their CDs together, preventing use of the attacks of another tree. As a result putting 5 points in each of the first two tiers for that tree and not leaving a full 10 points of damage lying around for subspecing isn't too bad.

Shaman are different. Enhancement uses every rotation spell that Elemental uses in Cataclysm, a situation which is as far as I know unique. As such any talent points which help out Elemental help out Enhancement. The logical choice then is to use the same approach as the first bucket of specs, assume we get a full 10 points of damage from subspeccing and don't put enough damage points in Enhancement. This is a really tricky thing to do with a Hybrid, because by necessity there needs to be a lot of points in your tree to separate you from 0/0/0. I'll give a little breakdown as to how I see the Enhancement points looking right now.

Holy Grail talents, these cannot be removed, they must either come as a bonus for speccing into the tree or in the tree themselves. Their cost can be reduced, but keep in mind they can't all be 1 point talents or some would be ridiculously powerful and honestly this would probably piss off other classes who look at our trees. Another option is to make them tree bonuses, but I think they're trying to equalize tree bonuses, and of course it would feel kind of wrong to get 2x the powerboost of any other class at level 10 then flatline thereafter. Most cannot be baseline or even in the first 2 tiers because they could lead to awkward Elemental playstyles.

Mental Quickness, Lava Lash, Storm Strike, Shamanistic Rage, Flurry, Maelstrom Weapon, Feral Spirits, Primal Wisdom, and Unleashed Rage.

Those are a lot of untouchable talents, they define the spec in many ways, some are rotation abilities, others are required to make a melee spec viable on a class that is very much a caster baseline.

Fun talents which shouldn't get the axe because they are exactly the kind of talents Blizzard likes and wants more of (you may not agree, but I'm 100% sure the Devs like these)

Elemental Devastation, Searing Flames, Improved Lava Lash and Static Shock

Everything listed above is a damage talent or a necessary talent to allow us to play in Hunter gear. Those talents alone fill out 25 of our 31 Enhancement points. Again any points beyond the 31 will be spent on damage, even if there is no more damage in our tree, because of the way Enhance and Ele play. For various reasons most of them cannot go into the couple rows. As a result you have our current mess of a talent tree.

How would I fix it? It's not easy because you can't put utility in the first two rows, imagine Elemental with Frozen Power. First off you are going to have to overbudget something by reducing the total number of points in those 25 points of listed talents, I'd say at least 3 points need to go. Second off they are really going to have to get rid of Improved Shields, possibly moving it to the Elemental Tree, because as soon as we run out of other damage points in Enhancement we'll fall back and put points into Improved Shields as long as that option remains.

Best case scenario for a long run? Even if changes like the listed ones are made IMO Blizzard is going to look at Ancestral Swiftness as a "Choice" so even if 100% of Enhancers choose this talent it will be their moral victory.

[Gunwolf]

Lots of stuff needs trimming in the trees still.

-Tons of "mana conservation" talents, either reducing mana, or gaining mana thru some way.
-ALL totem related talents dealing with buffs, increasing hp, range or duration, need to be deleted and baked into what the totem does already.
-Few 3 point talents that are not worth 3 points.....the new "3% crit talent" acuity is the big crap one, then elemental devestation is pretty useless and could be deleted, and Static Shock does like 3% of our damage and needs a big rework.
-Elemental still needs to spec for increased range. Resto still needs to spec for mana/healing totems to be buffed to the level of other classes, and Mana Tide still overwrites mana spring for the whole raid whenever you drop it.

[Omanley]

pretty much what fornaw said.
-we get our basic rotation spells through talents
-we use many elemental talents

makes for one tough itemisation.
maybe make maelstrom weapons a passive baseline (without stacks) ability that allows shamans to instant cast when hitting something (maybe 50% chance to proc after primal or stormstrike) in melee? ( ofc so that it´s not viable for ele to go melee (maybe increased proc chance when dw/2h using (100%))in raids.
1.)ele/resto could simply melee after the first few casts for instant spells while leveling, and had a easier life in pvp, where they are the easiest casters to lock down currently
2.)enh would gain a open talent slot which could be used for utility/survivability
3.)enh would be less rng dependant, as they would move from a ppm stacking (dispellable) buff to a 100% proc after stormstrike

the one thing blizzard would most likely have against this is that we´d have all of our "rotation" except lvb avaiable at a early lvl.