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There was another thread on this topic that kind of turned into the "DK neglect" thread, so I thought I would start a new one on the original topic.

We're interested in opinions on which current Cataclysm talent trees you find the most exciting.

Ground rules:

1) It isn't of much use to us if you like a talent tree because of one particular ability. That tells us little about the talent tree as a whole.

2) Likewise, your opinion won't count as much (in our minds anyway) if you like a talent tree just because it has all the talents you wish *your* class had. In that same vein, this is probably one case where you're more objective when you find that you like your own talent tree rather than just being all wistful about someone else's toys.

3) Please try and stick to the talent trees themselves and not use this thread for your laundry list of ideas to improve your class.

4) Brevity is the soul of wit.

Another way to think about this: Which classes benefited the most (in the sense of coolness, not necessarily raw power) from the talent overhaul?

[...]

Is it equally valid to discuss the opposite of this? As in, what talent trees you feel haven't really been changed at all, or received close to no benefit really of the overall as it's been so far?
The feedback is useful to a degree. The problem is it's really common to see something like "I'm disappointed with my tree. All the other class got a lot of amazing toys and new talents that I really think should be in my tree. All the other classes are incredibly excited about Cataclysm, while the people who play my class are all drunk in the gutter with despair. My tree has changed the least of all the trees and will clearly be terrible in Cataclysm." That kind of thing tends to be a cross between the grass is greener mentality and just campaigning for buffs. If you think you can be really objective about it, then go ahead, but my concern was that we'd get a lot of "My tree is the worst" feedback, which isn't useful when everyone says that about their tree. Ultimately, it's easier for us to make changes when we know what excites you rather than knowing that you want to be buffed (because we can pretty much assume the latter).

Dispellable Buffs
Many buffs can be dispelled because they are magical effects and because it's strategic to do so. Some buffs can't be dispelled either because it doesn't make sense, because the class couldn't function without the buff, or both. Slice and Dice can't be dispelled, but Savage Roar and Inquisition can be. We might decide to make or all or none of them dispellable. We really need to see more end-game PvP to make that determination. (Source)

Reforging useful stats
It's a matter of degree. Some players will reforge for a sub 1% dps gain, and that's their prerogative. We don't think the stats need to be that close, but they need to be somewhat close. If Ret paladins perfer crit to haste (or Enhacement prefer haste to mastery, etc. etc.) then that's okay so long as crit doesn't provide twice the dps per stat point as haste. If you're willing to take a previous tier's gear because the stat budget is more optimal, then we've got a problem, as we had a few times in the LK content. (Source)

Breaking crowd controls with melee AE
This is a consideration for many players though. A Prot warrior can't just merrily Thunder Clap no matter what -- they have to evaluate their surroundings, decide if it's appropriate to move slightly farther away, or if they just need to forgo their AE attack for the time being. If Crusader Strike constantly cleaved everything, then that would be really annoying. Having to sometimes drop a 15 sec cooldown ability out of your rotation (assuming you can't move or anything) shouldn't be that big a deal. There are no fights that I can remember off the top of my head where you need to keep a target CC'd in the middle of the melee for long periods of time, and if there are any, they are fairly rare. You should be thankful for the opportunity to sometimes respond to your surroundings by doing different things rather than always mashing the same buttons like you are dashing out a song on a piano. (Source)

Class Roles
You guys worry way too much about what buckets you're supposed to be in. It seems every time I come to the forums, I am asked to define someone's role.

In PvE, the only roles are tank, dps and healing. In PvP, the only roles are dps and healing (except for very specific circumstances like tanking Drek in AV). Situationally you might be called upon to carry a flag or defend a tower, but that's what you're doing at the moment, not what your talent spec is all about. There are 30 talent trees. They're all a little different. PvP doesn't have positions like quarterback, grenadier, left fielder, drum major or striker. Use all of the abilities you have in order to support your allies and be successful. If you're a Ret paladin, you should focus on melee dps, because that's where your strongest abilities lie.

Sometimes when I do try and explain how we think a spec should work, I often regret it. I'll say something like how Ret is supposed to be a melee dps class, and keep getting asked "Then why do we have heals?" or "Why should someone take me over a rogue if I'm just melee?" Trying too hard to label things is always going to result in a simplistic answer.

I'm not trying to dismiss the question. It's just not the way we think about things. (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Death Knights neglected in Cata?
"Neglect" is one of those words that typically makes developers roll their eyes and skip over to the next post. Just so you know.

Even the original DK trees are not very old compared to all the others, so in that sense, they didn't have so many layers of build up cruft that needed shaking off. We've changed up some of the mechanics that weren't working and got rid of some of the boring passive damage, but overall we didn't feel the need to replace talents like say Rime, Dirge or Killing Machine.

I'm just saying that it shouldn't come as much surprise that the most recently designed tree didn't need as much overhauling as say warrior and mage, which hadn't changed much since vanilla. (Source)

Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Can't use Shred on unusual raid encounters (Kologarn)
When we make an entire instance full of Kologarns then it will be a problem. I think you'll be fine if you can't manage maximum dps on every raid boss. I think the game loses far more when we can't make original bosses with unusual mechanics that we gain by having every dps spec do about the same relative damage on every fight. (Source)

Shred position prereq
PvP is rarely ever decided by someone's long term sustained dps though. It has a lot more to do with making the right decision at the right time.

In PvE there is no question that Shred is superior, but in most fights you can Shred. Those few fights where you can't Shred aren't ubiquitous enough to feel like a big deal. If you just find it too difficult to always get behind a creature to be able to Shred, then I'm not sure what to tell you. We don't think this problem is so widespread that Ferals are at a huge disadvantage overall. We agree that Feral has a really high skill cap in Lich King, but that's more do to the John Madden nature of the rotation than to Shred's positional requirement, and it's also something we've taken steps to improve in Cataclysm.

Many specs can't perform their highest 100% potential when mobs are moving or when they have to step out of the fire, but we aren't about to change those in order to make things easier on the player. I think raiding is plenty easy to be honest, unless you're talking about the more challenging heroic-mode encounters in which, yeah, we're asking you to step it up a little. (Source)

Innervate
Innervate is now based on YOUR mana, not the target's mana. GC specifically stated this makes Innervate useless for Ferals, as they do not want Ferals helping Healers in their mana management.
That's not actually what I said. I said that we wanted Feral's Innervate to be less powerful than Balance and Restoration, because we don't want "stack Ferals" to be the solution for healers who overheal a lot. Your Innervate will still be valued (probably more valued, all things considered), but it won't be and shouldn't be the magic pill that gets you a raid slot. (Source)

Hunter (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
New Multi-Shot
Our current version of Multi-Shot has not target cap. It's a little like Fan of Knives. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Seal Damage
There's no evidence of that though. You're just fretting. We nerfed Seal damage recently because Ret paladins were beating everyone on damage meters. We aren't spending much effort on numbers yet, but we need them to be reasonable enough so that playtesters don't do unusual things that they wouldn't do when the numbers are tuned more accurately. (Source)

Holy Power on white attacks?
Holy Power on white attacks was too unpredictable to the point of annoying. Imagine you have 2 Holy Power, start to push Crusader Strike and then at that instant get a white attack proc. Now you have wasted your 1.5 sec GCD *and* wasted Holy Power because you're technically at 4 now. Having Holy Power tied to yellow attacks is at least the kind of thing you can train yourself to watch out for. If you aren't hitting any buttons, then you aren't going to get Holy Power for example. You can notice after every button mash if you got that extra proc or not -- they aren't just happening out of the blue.

Stacking haste for fast Templar Verdicts
If hitting TV after 23 seconds qualifies as burst, then I think we'll be fine. Yes, once in awhile a Ret might get off a 32K Templar's Verdict, but that's not going to global anyone.

[...] Haste for most melee grants them more resources. Ret still isn't super dependent on mana though. It will be limiting enough that you can't spam heals or expensive spells like Consecrate, but it won't be so attractive that if we incorporated a haste to mana mechanic that it would at all be attractive.

Haste for casters makes their spells cast faster, but again you're doing so little of that that it won't be something you really need.

So neither of those mechanics works for Ret paladins. You'll get more damage from autoattacks of course, but so do the other melee. Tying haste to Crusader Strike cooldown is more consistent with the "haste lets you do more" model for the other melee. (There are no general mechanics that let haste lower the cooldown of something, so you're technically inaccurate in that sense.)

Finally, we could have just made the haste affects Crusader Strike cooldown a core mechanic. We made it a talent because we found in playtesting that some players liked CS at a predictable 4.5 sec cooldown and others appreciated having the cooldown come faster with haste. (Source)

Interesting Rotations
"Interesting" is in the eye of the beholder, so that's sort of a hard point to argue. We do think it's more complex though. Part of the problem is it's rather difficult for anyone to screw up the Ret rotation on live. If you hit things when they come off cooldown, you'll do pretty competitive damage. You have no resource to worry about and it's pretty hard to throw your rotation off for very long.

The change to Holy Power and adding spells like Inquisition and Zealotry means there is a lot more to juggle. If you let Inquisition fall or you aren't prepared to maximize Zealotry uptime, then you aren't playing to your full potential. If you don't hit TV when you get 3 Holy Power, or if you religiously hit TV but eclipse buttons like Judgement in the meantime, then you're not playing optimally.

Basically we are now engineering opportunities for players to make a mistake. If nobody can make a mistake, then there really is no test of skill and no opportunity for anyone to get better. That's the "faceroll" rep that the tree sometimes gets saddled with -- no matter what you do, you'll end up doing high damage. In Cataclysm, that won't be the case.

If you find you can master the new rotation trivially, then congratulations, you'll be one of the better paladins out there. I am very confident however that not everyone will be able to do so, and so Ret paladins who do a lot of damage will get more respect for being good players than for having picked the right class on the character select screen. (Source)

Retribution Rotation
Imagine you did nothing but Crusader Strike and Templar's Verdict. With no haste, you can do a Templar's Verdict every 13.5 seconds. With enough haste to lower Crusader Strike to 4.4 seconds, you can do a Templar's Verdict every 13.2 seconds. In the space in between Crusader Strikes you will be able to Judge and use Holy Wrath and sometimes get Exorcism procs. You might also use free cycles for utility abilities depending on the situation. But your rotation should never be so full that every Crusader Strike must land every 4.5 sec or its wasted. It might be wasted sometimes, but not so often that Sanctity of Battle is an unattractive talent. (Source)

[...] I'm going to leave out the Exorcisms, because they aren't predictable.

Here is a 4.5 cooldown:

0s: Crusader Strike (back at 4.5)
1.5: Judgement (back at 9.5)
3.0: Holy Wrath (back at 18)
4.5: Crusader Strike (back at 9)
6.0: (Hopefully Exorcism)
7.5:
9.0: Crusader Strike (back at 13.5)
10.5: Inquisition (back at 40.5)
12.0: Judgement (back at 20)
13.5: Crusader Strike (back at 18)
15.0: (Hopefully Exorcism)
16.5:
18.0: Crusader Strike (back at 22.5)
19.5: Holy Wrath (back at 34.5)
21.0: Judgement (back at 29)
22.5: Crusader Strike (back at 27)
24.0: Templar's Verdict
25.5:
27.0: Crusader Strike (back at 31.5)
28.5:
29.0: Judgement (back at 37)

Here is a 4.2 cooldown:

0s: Crusader Strike (back at 4.2)
1.5: Judgement (back at 9.5)
3.0: Holy Wrath (back at 18)
4.5: Crusader Strike (back at 8.7)
6.0: (Hopefully Exorcism)
7.5:
8.7: Crusader Strike (back at 12.9)
10.2: Inquisition (back 40.2)
11.7: Judgement (back at 19.7)
13.2: Crusader Strike (back at 17.4)
15.7: (Hopefully Exorcism)
17.2:
17.4 : Crusader Strike (back at 21.6)
18.9: Holy Wrath (back at 33.9)
20.4: Judgement (back at 28.4)
21.9: Crusader Strike (back at 26.3)
23.4: Templar's Verdict

Like Snozberries, I did that math quickly so I may have screwed up somewhere, but assuming I did not, your hardest hitting ability is available 0.6 sec earlier. Not a huge dps increase overtime, but probably comparable to an equivalent amount of crit rating (given that this is not the only haste benefit). (Source)

Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Lightwell Range
15 yards. (Source)

Lightwell vs. Health Stones
Healthstones are good and good players use them. If bad players continue to ignore Lightwell, we can live with that. If it becomes as useful as a Healthstone, perfect.

Also note that ignoring a Healthstone (or Lightwell) will be essentially like casting a mana drain on your healer, which is not the case today. (Source)