Cataclysm Class & Mastery Systems Update

[Nayt]

@Proto - A new army LOL, I love it! Never thought of my guys that way, I like ^_^

[fangless]

You offer no constructive criticism of what I said and post "lol shut up" and you complain about people being idiots? I'm sorry but do you not see the hypocrisy in your statement?

If Blizzard really wanted to balance all 30 trees they could. In fact most anyone could balance the trees, its actually not that hard. I have seen a great many suggestions (as well as really bad ones) to buff or nerf abilities for classes and specs that would have done well to balance the trees, yet were completely ignored by Blizzard.

For one reason or another Blizzard has chosen not to truly balance the trees, why they haven't, I truly don't know. Whether it be purposeful or due to incompetence I don't know, though I strongly suspect the former.

The one type of person I dislike the most, other than the blatant troll, on forums are the people such as yourself who accept everything Blizzard says as the word of God. I am reminded of the Ashen Verdict Reputation ring controversy. The lack of a plate class favorable Strength based ring not being included in the quest reward upon achieving certain reputation milestones with the Ashen Verdict. Blizzard response was that "technically" it was impossible to offer more than 4 quest rewards in a quest. Many people cried foul of this explanation while still a great many more, such as yourself, accepted Blizzards excuse, and then proceeded to defend Blizzard all the while chastising the objectors for their lack of faith in the almighty word of Blizzard. And then lo and behold a month later their was a 5th ring available.

lol shut up.

[Kuismar]

Coming from somebody who enjoys leveling alts this is great for those who are new to the game and even vets like myself. I hated having to look at a guide to see what points to put where while leveling. I knew I wanted to be X spec, but needed to also put a few into tree Y and then a few back into X... etc. This way you can look at the tree that is your primary until the 31pt and say out of these two talents what do I like more or what will help me more. Can't wait

[DeiVias]

Can't wait, i see no reason anyone should be complaining about this except those that hate change, it's nothing but good.

[NefariousNinja]

Coming from somebody who enjoys leveling alts this is great for those who are new to the game and even vets like myself. I hated having to look at a guide to see what points to put where while leveling. I knew I wanted to be X spec, but needed to also put a few into tree Y and then a few back into X... etc. This way you can look at the tree that is your primary until the 31pt and say out of these two talents what do I like more or what will help me more. Can't wait

I was a noob like that with my alt druid too

[Nincompoop]

Again, all you people that dont like this are absolutely stupid. No offense, but you guys know nothing about the game if you think this new talent tree change is going to enhance the casual player. Or you think that they are running out of ideas. The reason why they are doing this is to make the unnecessary talents go bye bye. If you guys were half educated and could read the blues like they are stated then you would question the reason why they are doing this.

Talents these days are just copied from the BIS forums like Elitestjerks.com and others anyways, so what does the talent tree have to do with raiding in the end... Nothing. The fact that Cataclysm is going to take more skill to play then lets say noobfest Wrath will scare more people then the fact that they are taking out all the bull crap talent choices.

In defense to all the people that are complaining that 21-10-10 "hybrid" specs are going away, some people wont be allotted to solo instances like that one DK or that rogue. So im sorry to them, but other then that i love the new change.

[Zaerix]

Very... something. I can't actively say if I like this idea until I can test it out, but that might not be until Cata actually releases seeing as I've never been very lucky so a beta invite doesn't seem likely.

Right now, however, I'm leaning towards not liking this new tree. I mean, I'd be fine with the tutorial and locking out other trees until a set point to teach people how to spec correctly, but reducing the number of talents just seems lazy. If it really is to make each level seem like an increase in power, I doubt it will go over well. There will still be a large jump from Azeroth to Outlands to Northrend and back to Azeroth from the way I see it. Not to mention there will be some levels where you don't get any abilities useful to your spec.

Why try to fix what isn't broken, Blizzard?

[superstargoddess]

I love it, hopefully this will be the death of cookie cutter builds and people can play the way that they want without having to all be the same in order to do top dps.

[Switchshot]

My god I love you blizzard, YES!

[Caldwhyn]

Sorry folks but I can't help but this does not feel like "it's done when it's done"-Blizzard behaviour any more.

It feels more like a small, struggling company trying to get out their promising MMO by the time their money runs out by cutting things and making big sweeping general changes in the last months before release. Yet we still talk about Blizzard who should have a more than comfy amount of cash stuffed away somewhere, not to mention a quite good reputation to impress potential investors with.

What's happening here?

I have no idea yet, whether I like those changes or not, need much more information to form an opinion but what I know is, that we had published talent trees even with designer comments in some of them an now they try to make us believe this change was long planned? Sorry but I don't buy that.

And if I look at the broad picture, I see only things cut out and lots of promising things changed to insignificant minor additions instead of new exciting gameplay additions. I feel like AoC or WAR beta again and yet this is still a Blizzard game and and one running and bringing in profit for years now. Sorry but this does not bode well. I honestly fear, that we all currently watch one of the last company delivering quality work in the mmo sector going down the drain - with many of us trying hard to close our eyes before it.

[tankytanktank123]

Sorry folks but I can't help but this does not feel like "it's done when it's done"-Blizzard behaviour any more.

It feels more like a small, struggling company trying to get out their promising MMO by the time their money runs out by cutting things and making big sweeping general changes in the last months before release. Yet we still talk about Blizzard who should have a more than comfy amount of cash stuffed away somewhere, not to mention a quite good reputation to impress potential investors with.

What's happening here?

I have no idea yet, whether I like those changes or not, need much more information to form an opinion but what I know is, that we had published talent trees even with designer comments in some of them an now they try to make us believe this change was long planned? Sorry but I don't buy that.

And if I look at the broad picture, I see only things cut out and lots of promising things changed to insignificant minor additions instead of new exciting gameplay additions. I feel like AoC or WAR beta again and yet this is still a Blizzard game and and one running and bringing in profit for years now. Sorry but this does not bode well. I honestly fear, that we all currently watch one of the last company delivering quality work in the mmo sector going down the drain - with many of us trying hard to close our eyes before it.

idiot/troll here, move along now, nothing to see

[Sulika]

Hooray, if I ever level up an alt again I get one meaningful talent choice at level 10. Every other char I have gets less talents to spend, less flexibility in how I spend them and pretty much no interesting mix specs (or is anyone really naieve enough to think there will be any interesting abilities in the first 10 points from any tree?).

So Blizzard basically flat out tell people they will take away half your talent points but let you grind 5 of them back on the way to 85 in return for which you can get, wait for it, the exact same abilities you get at the bottom of your talent trees right now! Thanks Blizz!

Yes, it might be a cleaner design, and yes, if I was going to level from 1-80 all over again it would be nice to have a bit of a better feeling when you ding level 10 but if you are level 80 this adds absolutely nothing to your game. The amount of people who are gushing over this like they were dinging level 10 all over again is funny. So a warrior can get Mortal Strike at level 10 instead of level 40, thats great, except my warrior is level 80 already, why should I care?

There will still be cookie cutter specs, there will still be DPS (or healing or survivability) increasing talents in every tree? Why? Because in a game where there are basically three roles to play talents that don't directly contribute to one of those three things are meaningless.

It is a very nice design but don't let that fool you. This is basically a way of forcing each class into one of three specs with minor variants. Since pretty much every class has one or two interesting hybrid specs that means every class is losing play options. So while it is a better design, and while it does fix the problem of hybrid specs always messing things up, and while it will improve levelling for new players, lets be honest, if you are level 80 already you just lost a lot of the choice you had in how you spec your character. I love how it is all done to give us "meaningful choices". Sorry, but if I have to spend over 75% of my talents in one tree it doesn't seem like much of a choice to me.

[Zokten]

Again, all you people that dont like this are absolutely stupid. No offense, but you guys know nothing about the game if you think this new talent tree change is going to enhance the casual player. Or you think that they are running out of ideas. The reason why they are doing this is to make the unnecessary talents go bye bye. If you guys were half educated and could read the blues like they are stated then you would question the reason why they are doing this.

Talents these days are just copied from the BIS forums like Elitestjerks.com and others anyways, so what does the talent tree have to do with raiding in the end... Nothing. The fact that Cataclysm is going to take more skill to play then lets say noobfest Wrath will scare more people then the fact that they are taking out all the bull crap talent choices.

In defense to all the people that are complaining that 21-10-10 "hybrid" specs are going away, some people wont be allotted to solo instances like that one DK or that rogue. So im sorry to them, but other then that i love the new change.

You sound like a blizzard employee based on how sure you are of everything.

[DeiVias]

For anyone thinking about going back and reading the last 26 pages, don't, my head hurts from all the people who obviously didn't read through the first few sentences on the blue posts.

[kraeden]

This is the stupidest thing, talk about lazy, "We can't balance things so we are making talent trees smaller."

That wasn't the reasoning at all, if you would pay attention.

[Butterbumps]

For anyone thinking about going back and reading the last 26 pages, don't, my head hurts from all the people who obviously didn't read through the first few sentences on the blue posts.

Yeah, this. It really seems like most of the whining comes down to "I fail at reading comprehension and/or understanding of game mechanics".

[Brini]

So I don't get to have a reduced chance of detection while stealthed AND a increased offhand damage combo on a low rogue any longer? People who are talking about how this will REDUCE cookie cutter builds confuse me because now there will be less to choose from in a tree even easir to set up a "standard" build. Plus you have the gold sink of respecs because you thought you wanted more damage output in groups, then realize you really miss the utility of not being seen as easily when soloing oh but to get that I lose this really effective move. Dammit! I have to pick that other tree again.

Overall this sounds like a bunch of B/S. It's either a desperate attempt to save a screwed up expansion that wouldn't be changed "enough" when due or it's a diversion to mess with everyones head before they change it again in a few weeks. I can imagine all the development team checking out the various sites like EJ to laugh at the pre-release attempts at strategy guides.

[Cyberzombie]

So I don't get to have a reduced chance of detection while stealthed AND a increased offhand damage combo on a low rogue any longer? People who are talking about how this will REDUCE cookie cutter builds confuse me because now there will be less to choose from in a tree even easir to set up a "standard" build. Plus you have the gold sink of respecs because you thought you wanted more damage output in groups, then realize you really miss the utility of not being seen as easily when soloing oh but to get that I lose this really effective move. Dammit! I have to pick that other tree again.

Overall this sounds like a bunch of B/S. It's either a desperate attempt to save a screwed up expansion that wouldn't be changed "enough" when due or it's a diversion to mess with everyones head before they change it again in a few weeks. I can imagine all the development team checking out the various sites like EJ to laugh at the pre-release attempts at strategy guides.

Way to only pay attention to half of the upcoming changes. Rogues are getting the reduced chance of detection across the board, for free.

Try another example. Or just shut up. Infact, just shut up.

[WAKAWAKA]

This is the stupidest thing, talk about lazy, "We can't balance things so we are making talent trees smaller."

It sounds making sense.

[carlos5577]

lol at the people complaining, its boring as of now as we speak. All people do now is go to elitist jerks or some other forums and copy/paste the spec. All the specs I've seen are the same and if its different it suddenly makes you a bad player all of the sudden.