[5.0 Discussion] Talent Discussions

[Mnemon]

Talents are no longer meant to maximize dps. They are meant purely for utility. Not hard to understand.

[stormgust]

Talents are no longer meant to maximize dps. They are meant purely for utility. Not hard to understand.

That's just wrong.
There are some pure utility tiers, but there are also tiers which are DPS/HPS cooldowns, or "passive" HPS/DPS increases.

[Pheanix712]

If im a boomkin. I don't want to have to change out of my form and cast spells for something stupid. I picked boomkins to dps, not to heal. If i wanted to heal, I would be resto. Just cause my person has hybrid SPECS doesn't mean you should be forced to be a hybrid. which is pretty much what they spent the whole time of cataclysm fixing.

[Seahippo]

If im a boomkin. I don't want to have to change out of my form and cast spells for something stupid. I picked boomkins to dps, not to heal. If i wanted to heal, I would be resto. Just cause my person has hybrid SPECS doesn't mean you should be forced to be a hybrid. which is pretty much what they spent the whole time of cataclysm fixing.

This. I love my boomkin the way it is now.

[Trencal]

I feel overlooked as a resto druid with these new talent trees....

Only really the 2nd and 4th tiers have anything appealing to resto druids, and then we only have 1 talent in each to choose...

Yea we'll be able to have different things, but from a pve perspective alot of the other stuff is junk

t1 - a sprint (cat form, waste of gcd), teleport + stealth(cat waste of gcd), 10% movement speed..

t2 - Cenarion ward or Natures swiftness.... Probably Cenarion

t3 - Faerie fire, aoe roots or typhoon... nothing really for pve, guess typhoon would be the best choice.

t4 - Wild charge, Jump to them and a natures swiftness without extra healing heal, Incarnation (Tol), Treants.... Tol or the jump... Probably ToL as its healing is better then natures.

t5 - Bear roar, Bear Stun and aoe pull.... pretty pointless in pve.

t6 - Heart of wild. Pretty much pointless as a resto druid as you have to heal, little time to dps. Shapeshifter, nothing good for resto druids. Disentanglement for the heal? probably.


There's few choices for a pve resto druid, yet they attempt to do something that's not cookie cutter.

Just disappointed.

[Meleti]

I seriously doubt that Displacer Beast is going to be a waste of a GCD for resto. It teleports you out of melee range and restealths you - is there a better ability to stop a train in progress?

edit: if you're talking PvE, I can sympathize. But sprints aren't a waste of a GCD by any means. Sometimes they're very good in PvE, actually.

[Blackfoo]

New Master Shapeshifter talent will grant us 10% attack power for 15 sec and stacks 3 times everytime we casts non instant spell. So will it worth to switch forms to human and stack 30% ap? i Think it will hurt cat rotation so hard, i dont want to swap into human form while playing a kitty...

would quit wow before having such a drastic change to feral rotation

[Deleted]

The problem is , that the game is still gonna balanced around pve numbers as the main idea (dont think so -too many pvp utilitys) , or nerf-balance things at pvp firstly and then move to pve section ?

(resto druid)

[huth]

That's just wrong.
There are some pure utility tiers, but there are also tiers which are DPS/HPS cooldowns, or "passive" HPS/DPS increases.

Yes. But what you have to keep in mind: All of them are designed so that you only have competition between like talents. If there's a HPS/DPS CD on a tier, the other two talents are also HPS/DPS increases. You're not deciding whether you get one, only how it works.

Everything you "need" to play your spec you will gain from baseline class abilities and spec abilities. These will also be what Blizzard uses to adjust the relative strength of the classes.

By leaving the old point system behind, Blizzard has made it necessary to adapt to a completely different way of thinking.
1) Your talents can be changed far easier than now.
2) They aren't competing in the same way they did before. A tier 6 talent only has to compete with the other two tier 6 talents.
You're not getting 6 points to spend on your set of 18 talents as you see fit. you get 6 independent choices out of 3 talents each.
It doesn't matter if the tier 4 healing CD is superior to the tier 2 reactive healing spell, because getting one has no effect on your ability to get the other.

[Deleted]

I feel overlooked as a resto druid with these new talent trees....

Only really the 2nd and 4th tiers have anything appealing to resto druids, and then we only have 1 talent in each to choose...

Yea we'll be able to have different things, but from a pve perspective alot of the other stuff is junk

t1 - a sprint (cat form, waste of gcd), teleport + stealth(cat waste of gcd), 10% movement speed..

t2 - Cenarion ward or Natures swiftness.... Probably Cenarion

t3 - Faerie fire, aoe roots or typhoon... nothing really for pve, guess typhoon would be the best choice.

t4 - Wild charge, Jump to them and a natures swiftness without extra healing heal, Incarnation (Tol), Treants.... Tol or the jump... Probably ToL as its healing is better then natures.

t5 - Bear roar, Bear Stun and aoe pull.... pretty pointless in pve.

t6 - Heart of wild. Pretty much pointless as a resto druid as you have to heal, little time to dps. Shapeshifter, nothing good for resto druids. Disentanglement for the heal? probably.


There's few choices for a pve resto druid, yet they attempt to do something that's not cookie cutter.

Just disappointed.

I have to agree with you and I'm surprised that not more here are talking about this. Seems like they don't have any plans for resto (or Moonkin too) yet. But if it stays like this, they definitely "f*cked up" for me and I'll reroll I guess

[darkwarrior42]

Yes. But what you have to keep in mind: All of them are designed so that you only have competition between like talents. If there's a HPS/DPS CD on a tier, the other two talents are also HPS/DPS increases. You're not deciding whether you get one, only how it works.

Everything you "need" to play your spec you will gain from baseline class abilities and spec abilities. These will also be what Blizzard uses to adjust the relative strength of the classes.

By leaving the old point system behind, Blizzard has made it necessary to adapt to a completely different way of thinking.
1) Your talents can be changed far easier than now.
2) They aren't competing in the same way they did before. A tier 6 talent only has to compete with the other two tier 6 talents.
You're not getting 6 points to spend on your set of 18 talents as you see fit. you get 6 independent choices out of 3 talents each.
It doesn't matter if the tier 4 healing CD is superior to the tier 2 reactive healing spell, because getting one has no effect on your ability to get the other.

This is exactly true. Talent Specializations no longer exist; you have specializations, and talents. As a Paladin, you choose between Holy, Retribution, and Protection for your specialization. At level 15, you choose one of the three level 15 talents. At level 30, you choose one of those talents.

If you look at the talents from the mindset of playing like you do in Cataclysm, you're probably going to be underwhelmed. Be creative, and think about the system in terms of how it's going to work (at least, for as much as we know).

---------- Post added 2011-10-22 at 04:52 AM ----------

I have to agree with you and I'm surprised that not more here are talking about this. Seems like they don't have any plans for resto (or Moonkin too) yet. But if it stays like this, they definitely "f*cked up" for me and I'll reroll I guess

With all due respect, as someone who currently mains a resto druids in raids, I disagree.

--Tier one: Displacer Beast not only blinks and prowls, it clears all dots. There are a lot of times where that will come in handy, and if it doesn't, just take the passive movement boost for that fight. We have a lot of hots, there are plenty of situations where you can spend one GCD to break dots on yourself (similar to a paladin using divine shield to clear dots, which still takes a GCD).
--Tier two: Nature's Swiftness is my favorite there, but we have no idea how Cenarion Ward will scale. And if it's a fight with a lot of raid damage or unusual mechanics, Renewal may well come in handy.
--Tier three: Typhoon is handy, but kiting is hardly worthless outside of PvP. Every healer has had, at some point, unwanted aggro. Why not snare that mob while you flee to the tank?
--Tier four: All talents look potentially useful, depending on what they do. Note that the Force of Nature talent reads "Summons 3 treants to assist in the druid's current combat role." That means if you're a resto druid, they'll heal. How they heal and how effectively they do so remains to be seen, but I'm not going to count them out just yet. Tree of Life looks like it no longer grants a passive boost to heals, instead only granting modifications to spells, so it's not as clearcut a winner.
--Tier five: Ursol's Vortex has a variety of uses; combine it with a shaman's earthgrab totem to gather everything and root it in place. Run up to the tank and pull everything in. Keep in mind, Ursol's Vortex says nothing about taunting, just pulling things in. Demoralizing Roar as a disorient could be very handy if you have unwanted aggro. Bear Hug is more limited, but still could be useful in select situations.... though I'd probably take the other two over it. My choice is Ursol's Vortex, to combo with other people (and working with other players is NOT limited to PvP), or even just to use mushrooms more effectively.
EDIT: Or take Mass Entanglement in Tier 3, and combine that with Ursol's Vortex, followed by popping Displacer Beast. All your enemies are now rooted in place with you 20 yards away, in stealth.
EDIT 2: Drop mushrooms before doing all this, follow displacer beast with Hurricane. Laugh.
--Tier six: Disentanglement says nothing about requiring you to initiate the shapeshift yourself, so I assume it procs off other abilities. You have aggro? Hit Disorienting Roar; you just broke any roots on yourself, healed 20% of your max health, and disoriented whatever was attacking you for a few seconds, while you flee to the tank. I'd say that's a solid use of a GCD. And there are certainly fights I've had time I could dps... fights where two healers is a bit uncomfortable, but three is overkill. Heart of the Wild will be lovely for those situations. Master Shapeshifter looks weak, because we have so little AP to start with that getting 30% more won't be a big boost to anything... but who knows what else they might change?

There's certainly room for improvement, but I could find at least two different options at each tier I'd be happy with for a resto druid right now.

[Braindwen]

but I could find at least two different options at each tier I'd be happy with for a resto druid right now.

Tossing in a bear, excuse me, *guardian* perspective:

Tier 1: Passive runspeed is a good standard. Bonus dash+root breaks will probably have its uses, and, again, removes all dots. I have no doubt some boss abilities will ignore that, but I also doubt all will, and it could be a good advantage to have. A tad harder to use as it requires either a quick re-shift+taunt or an OT handy, but I'd be pretty amazed if no situation supports it.
Tier 2: Waiting on a #'s pass on Cenarion ward, but I favor the other two atm. NS allows for healing/cc utility in bear form (Though I hope including rebirth on there doesn't mean it requires us to be out of bear normally), and a 30% self heal for a tank is nothing to sneeze at.
Tier 3: ME's use is limited as it requires us to be out of bear, in addition to being a 2 second cast. May sync up well with Heart of the Wild (more on that later). Bearphoon and Snaring FF? Both of those get my paw of approval.
Tier 4: My only fear is FoN or Incarnation being "too strong" of CDs to pass up, as I like having a charge. Personally this tier is the most worrisome to me, as it may prove to be a no-brainer (and that's no fun).
Tier 5: Extra bash (that admittedly stuns me, oh well), or aoe disorient, or the ability to group up dungeon trash. I personally prefer Vortex or Hug, but demo roar could have its uses.
Tier 6: MSS is grossly undertuned for current numbers, and having the effects stack and consume a stack when used implies it's not intended to be a part of a dps/tanking rotation to shift out. At least, I hope not, I'm sort of hoping it's just a passive bonus to healing/lolspelldamage and a slight consolation bonus when you do use it upon returning to form. I don't see shifting being common enough in PVE to favor it. Disentanglement is pretty neat, any pause because a boss casts lets me powershift and heal.
As for heart, its hard to tell since the effect for guardian isn't up. I expect it to improve other forms like usual (ie increased hit, damage, healing, etc.) AND allow you to keep most of your defenses while shifting. We can't shift while tanking currently because we lose 75% of our armor, and we aren't even remotely close to tanks when we do. If heart lets you keep your armor (obviously losing avoidance if casting) it could really be useful. Otherwise it's just "oh I'm not tanking right now, might as well pop it cause I won't get a chance later".

Again, at least 2 talents per tier that I could find useful. Only one tier am I worried about 1 talent trumping the others, and that's only due to limited current information.

[Hoticehunter]

New Master Shapeshifter talent will grant us 10% attack power for 15 sec and stacks 3 times everytime we casts non instant spell. So will it worth to switch forms to human and stack 30% ap? i Think it will hurt cat rotation so hard, i dont want to swap into human form while playing a kitty...

Don't focus on the numbers. The numbers are going to change. Hell, I'm sure a lot of the talents will change. MoP isn't even in alpha. Just think about the... "spirit" of the talent. It's probably meant to help if you have to swap out of form to cast something, it's probably not meant to be a buff that you keep 100% uptime on for max dps.

[Icefalcon]

My understanding is at lvl 90 you don't need talents to do your selected role 100%. These talents are only meant to add some other sparkle or bonus to your role. You won't need any of them to heal, dps or tank. Maybe a fight in a raid the raid leader will ask for druids to grab the aoe root talent. etc.

A kitty is asked to battle rez, the heart of wild buff will help decrease the dmg loss of the battle rez by giving him an extra 10% ap to make up for the loss of the shift and cast but in no way will it be beneficial to try and work in 3 shifts to 'max' dps. Blizzard wants us to stop thinking that way. They are giving you your max spec when you choose your role. Talents are like vanity buttons abilities now.

Talents are extras and nothing more. Thats why none of them are 'omg i can't wait for to use that'. Think of them as abilities that druids over the past 8 years has said 'you know what would be cool if once every month i could do x, that would be fun'.

[exochaft]

Don't focus on the numbers. The numbers are going to change. Hell, I'm sure a lot of the talents will change. MoP isn't even in alpha. Just think about the... "spirit" of the talent. It's probably meant to help if you have to swap out of form to cast something, it's probably not meant to be a buff that you keep 100% uptime on for max dps.

Was about to say this. Especially when many of the druid talents say "Example:" in them... Blizz never words their multifaceted abilities like this in actual tooltips, meaning these are hardly set in stone. With respect to the information released so far, I can see some very interesting variations for specs, especially if you consider the synergy of other classes (which only one post so far has really commented). And as always, if you've ever been in a beta for WoW (or heck, even an alpha), you'll understand that almost all the specific information will change due to scaling, impracticality, or even simply coding issues. If you have severe issues in the beta phase, that would be the appropriate time to vent constructively to Blizz.

Talents are extras and nothing more. Thats why none of them are 'omg i can't wait for to use that'. Think of them as abilities that druids over the past 8 years has said 'you know what would be cool if once every month i could do x, that would be fun'.

I agree and disagree. I agree with the intent that Blizz wishes to make with these talents. I disagree in the fact that no matter what, people will always strive for a talent structure even on a fight-by-fight basis to maximize their potential to win an encounter. The tricky thing Blizz needs to accomplish is to make all encounters feasible with none of these extra talents, where you don't have to class/talent stack your way to victory. The complete restructuring of the talent tree system is a step in the right direction, though, as it semi-simplifies all possible variations in a fight. I should also mention that after reviewing all the class talents released, many of them are actually DPS/tanking/healing CDs, and would likely be used frequently in encounters.

...and some of the talents I can't wait to use, as they solve some of feral tanks' pet peeves.

[Deleted]

If im a boomkin. I don't want to have to change out of my form and cast spells for something stupid. I picked boomkins to dps, not to heal. If i wanted to heal, I would be resto. Just cause my person has hybrid SPECS doesn't mean you should be forced to be a hybrid. which is pretty much what they spent the whole time of cataclysm fixing.

Heart of the Wild is awesome for heavy damage fights where balance druids would have to tranq and what not. A lot of balance druids that actually like to play their class to the max will love this. I mean, a tranq boosted by 40%( just guessing, we have no clue how the eclipse will affect heals ) is MADNESS. Just bluntly saying you went balance to be balance, you might aswell have rolled a pure dps class. Same goes to all the kitty nay-sayers to versatility and utility.

Master Shapeshifter will be really nice for pvp.

[Deleted]

dang this puts resto druid so hard on the map again
i freaking love it !
T1 displacer
T2 renewal
T3 mass entangle
T4 incarnation
T5 demo roar
T6 disentangle

all of this is soo good for survival and utility love it

[Sprucelee]

I will play my resto in PVP again if even half of that stays. The vortex to flying heal then aoe entangle ftw

[Deleted]

t1 - a sprint (cat form, waste of gcd), teleport + stealth(cat waste of gcd), 10% movement speed..

Sprint - Life saver in many situations.
Teleport + Stealth - Its basicly a vanish-like ability, could be really powerful if it dispelled certein dots of bosses that would normally have to be healed (just imagine if you had that back on PP:HC. Get is asap, clear it, debuff gone)
10% movement speed - Its like a run speed enchant, but passive and w/o the enchant.

t2 - Cenarion ward or Natures swiftness.... Probably Cenarion

Nothing to say here, you actually figured this one out yourself.

t3 - Faerie fire, aoe roots or typhoon... nothing really for pve, guess typhoon would be the best choice.

AoE roots can be extremely handy on some encounters, as with typhoon. If you fail to see this, you simply lack overview. Think of fights like ragnaros. Having a healer throw out a typhoon is REALLY handy.[/quote]

t4 - Wild charge, Jump to them and a natures swiftness without extra healing heal, Incarnation (Tol), Treants.... Tol or the jump... Probably ToL as its healing is better then natures.

Untill you know what the Treants do for resto druids you really cant comment on this one. Guardian of the Ancient Kings for paladins is a really really good burst-heal CD. Could work along those lines on treants.
Wild Charge will not only be nice for healing but most likely also for your own survivability as it increases your mobility.

t5 - Bear roar, Bear Stun and aoe pull.... pretty pointless in pve.

Doing a bear roar to CC all mobs around you for 4 seconds isnt useless for a resto druid. Think outside of the box.
Also, being able to ditch out (at current, 30% of 120k health (just for the ease of maths) = ~36k dmg in 3 seconds on a 1 min CD is going to be nice, especially paired with burn phases with little to no dmg (think alysrazor before reignite).
AoE pull will be possibly be really handy for some encounters aswell.

t6 - Heart of wild. Pretty much pointless as a resto druid as you have to heal, little time to dps. Shapeshifter, nothing good for resto druids. Disentanglement for the heal? probably.

You dont even know what Heart of the Wild will do for resto druids yet, so you really cant comment on it. Once again, if it enhances spellpower more or does anything in a way with it, its a nice cooldown for burn phases where no/little healing is needed. Shapeshifter is really situational. If your stacked on a boss and you know a big aoe is inc, you could get the 30% spellpower to boost your Tranq to insane heals.
Disentanglement speaks for itself.




Really people, you gotta stop thinking INSIDE the box. Start thinking outside of the box. It scares me what type of raiders most of you are if you dont see the potential in all these talents. And the stuff written above is just random toughts of mine.

There's few choices for a pve resto druid, yet they attempt to do something that's not cookie cutter.

A lot of possiblities. A. Lot. Of. Possiblities. All it requires is to drop that tunnel-vision on healing and actually play the class you rolled.

[Mnemon]

That's just wrong.
There are some pure utility tiers, but there are also tiers which are DPS/HPS cooldowns, or "passive" HPS/DPS increases.

There are very few talents that give a passive dps increase outright, if any. There are a few talents that are dps cooldowns, but they are in the same tier and all, in the end, tend to do about the same. Or one may be better for pvp while one for pve, which makes the choice easy depending on what situation you're in. None of them really make a huge difference either.

People looking at master shapeshifter and thinking it will be necessary for dps increase are looking at it wrong. For feral, you would have to shift out, cast 3 "cast time" spells to get 30% increased damage, shift back, one attack at 30%, one at 20%, one at 10%. So you would waste at the least, 5 global cooldowns roughly just to get the bonus only to have it work on 3 attacks and get weaker after the first? Then you take into account you have to cast the spells to get the buff. This is not meant to be a pve damage increase.

What this is is an ability that rewards the druid for taking on the roll of constant shapeshifting to help make up for the incredible lack of dps they will be producing while doing all this. It's for those times your raid wants you to shift out and battle rez, then root an add, then hibernate another add, then shift back. You lost a ton of dps by having to do that, but at least now you'll have a +30% attack, a +20% attack, and a +10% attack. Definitely not a dps gain, but it's less punishing.

Almost all the druid talents are utility. To help recover from having to do things other than dps or heal. None of them you HAVE to have. Only a few of them act as actual dps cooldowns and even then, they are situational still.

All the classes are like this now. All the important stuff is baked into the spec. The talents are purely cool situational abilities that you can use depending on what you may be doing in a particular role. I think it is an amazing idea.

It's time to get away from the idea of cookie cutter talent builds to maximize dps cause none of the talents as they are are gonna make a significant change in your dps.