World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

"Old" masteries
I would not focus too much on the old masteries, except for the third one that scales with gear. That one is still around.

Vengeance for tanks is still around and dps get damage and healers get healing and that sort of thing but the system has changed quite a bit overall (and partially as a result of community feedback). (Source)

Next beta build will be interesting
We want to unveil the entire enchilada in the next beta build or so. Everyone here worked really hard to get the whole package to a relatively playable and polished state. In essence we're not announcing a future plan -- we're telling you how the game works today. It's all done.

It's hard to offer timelines for when we will do a new beta push, but we're talking days or a few weeks, not months. All of the passives will be visible then. (Source)

Talent Points gain rate
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. (Source)

Spec abilities scaling
Specialization-defining abilities that are unlocked (e.g. Mutilate, Penance, Water Elemental and Mortal Strike) will scale based on a character's level and reflect an appropriate amount of damage, healing, and mitigation, etc. With the proper balancing, having these abilities at level 10 won't trivialize the leveling experience, but instead enhance it by allowing players to incorporate unique spells and skills that highlight their specialization into their rotations at a much earlier level.

We'll be closely monitoring how these new talent changes affect gameplay in the beta and will make adjustments to the system if necessary to ensure that our original goals are met. (Source)

Dual Spec
Dual Spec won't change. If you choose Protection paladin at level 10, you can respec to Ret paladin at your class trainer. Once you unlock Dual Spec, you can have 2 Prot builds or a Prot and Ret build or whatever you'd like. It will work almost exactly the way it does now. (Source)

New Talent system is ZOMG AMAZING
It's ZOMG AMAZING. We wouldn't go through all the work it is taking if we weren't convinced it was 100% win.

On your first point, too many of the specs didn't really feel like their spec until they had spent a lot of talents in the tree. All mages pretty much played the same until level 30 to 40 or so. Even with the Cataclysm changes, a Holy, Prot and Ret paladin would pretty much be using Crusader Strike and Judgements until they had several more abilities unlocked.

On your second point, we know some players liked the option of spending some points in the first tree and then some in the second tree. Often this was just a trap for new players though because it delays your getting the 21, 31 and other "gold medal" talents that really define your tree. Experienced players might learn to get a 5/5/5 build or whatever and then respec once they could reach the 31, but we could also just make better trees that didn't ask you to do that. (Source)

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). (Source)

New Talent trees overview
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. (Source)

Hybrid builds and active talents
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 (tm). (Source)

Current talents are too complicated
The new model theoretically buys us several more expansions of not having to mess with the overarching talent tree design. In a broader sense though, one of the challenges of working on World of Warcraft is adding new content without making the game totally inaccessible to new players.

I have used this example several times, but we have one very senior designer at Blizzard who isn't working on WoW but obviously knows the game very well and has been very active in PvP and raiding at various points in time. He took a short break from the game (I suspect to play Modern Warfare 2) and when he came back, we had messed around with his class's talent trees and reset his talent points, so he felt like he couldn't jump back into the game again without spending 45 minutes researching what the community thought a good build would be. We're hoping with simpler (but still deep!) talent trees, players like him will feel more comfortable picking their own talents. He might eventually go poke around in theorycrafting forums to min / max his build, but he won't have the moment of being completely overwhelmed when looking at a blank talent tree. (Source)

In previous expansions, more choices were given to the players in terms of how they built their characters. Players were freely given the choice to spend points however they want.
[...] While that is true, they were also given ample opportunities to make mistakes, what we call "traps." A forum-savy player may know which are the dumb talents nobody takes or which are the mandatory ones that might at first glance seem too bland to take. But why have "choices" that are just there for new players or people who just want to swim against the stream just to be different? We'd rather have actual legitimate choices, which we feel like we can offer by having a stable of fewer good talents.

To use one of the infamous GC analogies, the best restaurants are not necessarily those with a lot of entrees on the menu. The best restaurants probably have very few choices, but you know that anything you order will be great. They don't bother cooking it if they know it will suck. That's a real choice as opposed to the diner with fish on the menu that everyone, ever the waitress, whispers under their breath that you should never, ever order. (Source)

Dungeon Finder and new talent system
We expect a lot of players to use Dungeon Finder while leveling up. The feature works great for that, and we're spending some effort to update the older dungeons to not be so overspawned and in some cases to even fit into the zone quest content better.

Likewise, we're making an effort to let tank and healing specs be more effective when soloing. DPS specs will still probably be more efficient leveling, but if you just love the Resto shaman tree, you should be able to quest and run some dungeons without even having a dual-spec. It won't be spectacular, but it will be a huge improvement from today.

Tanks and healers will get basic abilities before level 15 (when Dungeon Finder is available) to do their jobs, but it's also true that the lower level content is more forgiving of your talent spec. (Source)

Vengeance
You get it at level 10 for choosing a tanking tree. It already scaled with your health and incoming damage, so there isn't really a need for it to scale with talent points spent (especially since nearly 100% of tanks spend the most points in a tanking tree). (Source)

Death Knight (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
When do DK get to pick a specialization?
When they get their first talent point for completing a quest. (Source)

Deleted talents
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. (Source)

Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Feral builds with the new system
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. (Source)

Omen of Clarity
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. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Divine Storm @LVL10 for Retribution
Divine Storm is a big deal because Retribution paladins get it at level 10. You'll get a new bottom o' the tree talent. (Source)

Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Mind Flay and Shadowform @LVL1x for Shadow
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. (Source)

Holy signature ability
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. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Preparation
It's a design flaw that rogues and locks are so dependent on Prep and Soul Link respectively. Those talents are currently holding the classes back. Now we can't balance around the assumption that you have those talents so your classes need to function without them. Maybe it means lowering base cooldowns.... (Source)

Shadowstep
Naturally, the 31-point Shadow Dance is totally inaccessible to Rogues speccing other trees. But what about Shadowstep? Is that a tree-specific, unpointed talent that is totally inaccessible to all other specs?
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. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Dual Wield for Enhancement
So now my cagey comments about how Enhancement gets dual-wield right away and Elemental never gets it make more sense. (Source)

Warlock (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Soul Link
It's a design flaw that rogues and locks are so dependent on Prep and Soul Link respectively. Those talents are currently holding the classes back. Now we can't balance around the assumption that you have those talents so your classes need to function without them. Maybe it means lowering base cooldowns.... (Source)

Probably no early Felguard for Demonology
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. (Source)

Cool talents aren't going away
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. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Mortal Strike
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). (Source)

Shield Slam @LVL10 for Protection
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. (Source)

Toughness stays, Vitality is a passive bonus
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). (Source)

Specialization Bonus - Anger Management and 2H Weapon Spec for Arms
The Arms one for the moment is Two-Handed Weapon Spec (+10% damage with two-Handed weapons) and Anger Management (free rage). (Source)

Arms - Mastery bonus in Cataclysm
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. (Source)

PvP
Tanking/Protection specs in Arena
We want the Protection specs to have a place in Arena play, but to be frank, it's not our highest priority. Our sense is that most players who chose Protection chose it for tanking.

We don't want Protection dps to be trivial, but we also don't want it to rival that of say mages and rogues even in PvP. A Protection class in PvP should be more about survival and control, not about massive damage. With the added focus on BGs in Cataclysm, the tanking specs will be good at flag defense or flag-carrying, which suits their strengths.

The Vengeance mechanic is a way to help us balance tank damage. It can be as high as it needs to be in PvE, while much lower and most-importantly dispellable in PvP. (Source)

PvP Balance and counter abilities
We think class design in WoW has reached what I often call an arms race in PvP. That is a class gains a snare, then another class gains the ability to break snares, so the first class also gains a root, then the second class gets an ability to break roots, and so it goes. Players tend to ask for abilities or talents that reduce their weaknesses, but when we go there, then someone else's strength isn't a strength any longer.

On the one hand, having abilities and counter abilities adds depth to the fights. You need to be familiar with your defenses and everyone else's as well and need to decide, often in a split-second, when to use an ability or save it.

But on the other hand, it justs adds bulk to the game. Simple outcomes can have depth too.

I say all that as way of preamble, because we are taking a really hard look at a lot of the ubiquitous PvP-survival talents, such as those that reduce mechanic durations, provide pushback resistance, let you take less damage while stunned, etc. Our sense is that because so many of these have become ubiquitous, PvP is balanced around the assumption of those mechanics. Instead of them being some cool or clever power you have to mitigate their effects, they are just the norm. They become not a choice, but mandatory.

It's likely you'll start seeing a lot of these counter mechanics getting phased out. We may not be able to get rid of every one, but we can get rid of a lot of them. Warriors may freak out when they think they will be CC'd permanently, but then they will start to relax when they see everyone is losing those mechanics and we take a hard look at the CCs themselves knowing that the passive and active CC counters are no longer in play. (Source)

Healing and dispells in Cataclysm
For starters, dispels themselves are going to have higher mana and situational costs. I don't anticipate every hot is just going to be automatically removed.

The reduction talents are something we are taking a look at. We don't want healers to have to spend talent points on them, which means either everyone will get the now standard reduction across the board, or we'll just remove them from everyone and balance interrupts around that. (Source)

Healing
Healing in Cataclysm
Prior to LK, healers could run out of mana, and for the most part it worked. They didn't just use their efficient heals, because sometimes their group would die if they did. They didn't just use their big heals though, because they'd run out of mana (and then the group would die).

I think of healing like a cross-continental road race. If you go too slow, you'll lose the race, but if you just floor it the whole itme, you'll run out of fuel a lot and waste time stopping to fill it up again. There is a happy medium somewhere in between. However the encounter specifics push you out of that medium, sometimes asking you to choose big numbers over efficiency and sometimes vice-versa.

I know it sounds like we are picking on healers all the time, but once you can run out of mana again, I think everything will just feel better, your choices about what spell to cast next become more compelling, and the healing game overall will be more engaging. (Source)

Overhealing
I'm not convinced healers will leave tanks at half health on purpose. That wasn't a popular strategy in say Black Temple or Sunwell when mana was more of an issue. You may not be pressured to immediately top off a tank constantly, but leaving a tank purposefully injured in order to prevent overhealing isn't going to be a sound strategy. (Source)

Coordination
I would put hots on people who need healing but aren't likely to die in the next few seconds. I understand there is still a lot of concern about "but he will ninja my heal!" but that is today's world where wasted mana doesn't matter. If you're on challenging content and your healers can't coordinate, then that's something your group will need to resolve. (Source)

Druid (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Restoration in Cataclysm
I wouldn't use Healing Touch that much in a 5-player dungeon. It's slow and expensive and heals for a lot, and you really don't want to be overhealing a lot in Cataclysm. Maybe if the tank has been whittled down and you just can't catch up, you could throw it out there. For the most part, I would use Rejuv and Nourish to heal the group and Lifebloom and Nourish to heal the tank, throwing out Swiftmend or Regrowth for emergencies.

We want Wild Growth (and Circle of Healing) to be really good spells, but it's hard to keep them in that niche without them just being used every time they are off cooldown. High mana costs are supposed to make you ask yourself: Am I hitting Wild Growth to heal 2 people just because it's an easy / lazy thing to do?

The limit-one Lifebloom is our attempt to make the spell a really useful tank-healing tool again. It's just too easy to keep an instant spell up on lots of targets, yet this is one case where we don't want the mana cost to be excessive. We also have a mechanic to let a stack of Lifebloom be refreshed by Nourish -- without this mechanic, druids just don't have the GCDs to do much more than keep hots up on tank and avoid any spell with a cast time. But if you could keep stacks on multiple targets so easily, druid would be too powerful at healing.

We know making this change to Lifebloom will have PvP ramifications, but we're also okay with that. We need to shift PvP healing (for everyone) back towards cast time spells. When PvP healing is balanced around heals that can't be interrupted and can be cast on the move, then we have to do crazy things to give your opponents any chance to counter them. Resto druids have had a storied history of being overpowered or underpowered in PvP and we want to avoid these extremes. You'll still be casting hots, but you'll be casting non-hots as well.

It's all early in development though and we haven't done a lot of PvP balance testing yet, so this design will evolve over time. Resto druids have a lot of spells, some of which have very subtle niches. Our initial strategy is to try and find homes for them all, because we like the spells. But if we can't make it work, we'll start cutting some. (Source)

Healing with HoTs only
It's an apt comparison because we see Affliction locks all the time who say "I only want to cast dots. Any time I cast Shadow Bolt, that's an abomination." But we want Affliction casting Shadow Bolt. Casting Shadow Bolt doesn't mean casting nothing but Shadow Bolt. Likewise, we want druids to cast Nourish and Healing Touch and not just keeping Rejuvs on everyone.

Classes can feel different from each other without being so unique that they have nothing in common with each other. If you're going to invest many hours healing on a druid, it's more important to us that what you're doing is dynamic and engaging over the long haul. You'll notice that a lot more than you will how similar or dissimilar you are to the healer standing next to you. (Source)

lol-heals (I like the name!)
The vanilla druid used a single heal for the most part, Healing Touch, so I don't find your analogy apt. What we are trying to do is give druids more heals than ever rather than having the overpowered heals vs. the lol heals. Using more cast-time heals does not mean removing the "hot flavor" of druids, unless your definition is "I only hot." Referring to my previous post, we don't think the game design will work for *any* class that relies so much on a single category of spells. It barely works for mages because they have so many mechanics to support those few spells, but even in that example we are expanding their repertoire. (Source)

Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Spamming Power Word: Shield
Pre-shielding when you know big damage is on the way for select targets is fine. Trying to keep shields up on the entire raid is a strategy that we think A) is too good, and B) isn't fun. I think a lot of the players who think it is fun feel that way because it's overpowered, not because it's a really engaging activity. When your decision making consists of cycling through targets and casting PW:S on any target without Weakened Soul, then you aren't really responding to the encounter -- you're acting like a glorified macro. Now maybe some of you will argue that you take a lot more into consideration before executing a pre-heal, but the fact is that Disc priests can be unbelievably effective without doing so. (Source)

Power Word: Shield in Cataclysm
An Icecrown parse for a Disc priest might have PW: Shield (including its glyph) and Divine Aegis at 80% of healing done. Imagine that is more like 50 or 60% of healing done. That's still a lot of power for shields. The remainder would be filled in by spells like Penance, PoM, Heal and Greater Heal. (Source)

Improved Flash Heal
We have a talent, Improved Flash Heal, that does nothing else except buff flash heal. - a spell we won't likely use - Are you going to keep that talent?
I would suspect not. We tried to pump up Flash Heal for Disc before because it was the only cast-time heal that really mattered. In Cataclysm, it is basically an emergency heal, which is something PW:S and Penance already do well. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Rockbiter taunt effect
Avoiding a wipe is the responsibility of everyone in the group. If you don't think you'll use the ability, don't use it. Simple as that. You don't even have to spend talent points to get it.

Hunters and demons have pets that are designed to tank. That doesn't mean they are a tanking class. Shaman will tank on rare occasions, just as warlocks and hunters are sometimes called upon to tank. That doesn't mean they will be able to choose the tank role in Dungeon Finder or will be very effective trying to be the MT for a group. As far as tanking classes go, there are four: warrior, paladin, druid and death knight. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Titan's Grip ...
The budget of Titan's Grip or the fact that it's passive don't bother us at all. It's still an interesting talent in that it has a pretty big impact on how you play. If you doubt that, consider instead how it would feel if the talent gave you a damage bonus when using two one-handed axes rather than using two two-handed weapons. Everything from the swing speed to the stat budget is what makes the talent feel like it's breaking the rules. (Source)

... and Single-Minded Fury
I don't think Single-Minded Fury needs to be exactly as powerful as Titan's Grip at every gear level and in every situation. It needs to be balanced at very high or best-in-slot gear levels, or it will just get ignored. But at lower levels, I'm not convinced it will be a problem. Say it is proven that Titan's Grip wins hands-down at the pre-heroic dungeon level. Now a warrior runs a level 85 dungeon and a blue one-handed Strength weapon drops that is a big upgrade over his quest green two-handed weapon. Even though Titan's Grip is theoretically stronger with equal gear, he doesn't have equal gear. He has a one-handed upgrade.

We might have to keep tweaking one talent or the other to keep them in rough parity, but those are relatively easy knobs to adjust. (Source)

Mage (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Spell haste and Fireball / Frostbolt cast time
I think the problem is actually with Early Frost. We just think that e.g. a 3.5 sec Fireball isn't really playable. You probably noticed that the low ranks of Fireball are even much faster, because the spell really isn't usable until the cast time is reduced.

We are going to be much more vigilant about haste getting out of control (from talents and gear) to where GCD issues get to be a problem. Simply making non-haste stats more attractive will help as well. (Source)

Priest (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Discipline
Discipline will still use PW:Shield a lot, but you will probably see less "pre-healing" across the board, because it won't be mana efficient. PW:Shield will probably go back to being more of an emergency button and less of the survivability buff it gets treated as today.

In addition to shielding, Disc will continue to cast Penance a lot, and will probably use Heal and Greater Heal. Flash Heal overlaps in niche a lot with both PW:Shield and Penance, so it may be the least used. (Source)

Rogue (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Combat Tree
Improved Sprint I will grant you doesn't have a lot of use in PvE.

But Improved Kick and Improved Recuperate do. Improved Kick will be of situational use on bosses that can't be silenced, but Improved Recuperate will keep you alive. In a world where healer mana will be much more precious, minimizing wasted mana is going to be a bigger deal.

We're not going to make trees where every point in a dps tree is a dps upgrade. Those are the kinds of talent builds we're trying to get away from, because they remove player choice. We are trying to engineer points in all trees where you have to choose between non-dps talent A and non-dps talent B, because as soon as A or B leads to dps, then the choice goes away. (Source)

Shaman (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator / Cataclysm Talent Calculator)
Weapon Enchants
Enchants are technically really complicated spells in WoW, so what we want to do and what we can do aren't always aligned without investing sometimes weeks of programmer time. I say that by way of heavy caveats, because none of this may actually come to pass.

However, what we'd like to do is: A) Restrict DW to Enhancement only, B) Restrict shaman weapon enchants to being unique (meaning no WF / WF or FT / FT), and C) Remove the internal cooldown on Windfury, since once you can only have one, the proc rate won't be a balance problem. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / 3.3.5 Talent Calculator)
Passive survivability talents
We just think at the end of the day that a warrior needs to look at their his talents and feel like they are making his survivability better. As an example, it's all well and good to have some fun or utility talents in the Disc priest tree, but if there also weren't some bread and butter talents to make you a better healer, Disc priests would feel cheated. Sword and Board is a fun Prot talent, but it doesn't improve your survivability directly in a very noticeable way.

Imagine a new talent that was a 30% chance to lower the cooldown of your Last Stand, or a 30% chance to proc an armor buff on you. It might be an exciting talent, but it could also be really frustrating every time it didn't proc. For the same reason tanks tend to gear for mitigation over random avoidance, they'd probably be really skeptical of a talent that had a chance of lowering their damage taken. There's room for some talents like that, and Critical Block is an example, but a whole tree of them might get frustrating. You might feel like your survivability was out of your control and really at the mercy of encounter specifics or even a random chance for a proc.

Put another way, we want players to have some choices in how they talent, but we don't want the whole tree to feel optional. A Prot warrior who chose to spend no talent points should feel like a really terrible tank, instead of just losing some utility or threat, in the same way an untalented healer should feel like they are sacrificing a lot of healing. Thus we think there is room for a few passive talents, especially for tanks, where having too many non-passive talents risks hurting consistency. (Source)