Cataclysm Class & Mastery Systems Update

[MusikDisaster]

Aw, I liked all the options.
I'm sure they'll work it out, I believe in you, Blizzard!

[Cyann]

I like these changes. For awhile I thought something like this was going to have to happen if they were truely going to remove passive talents. Cuz the other alternative is them replacing every boring passive talent with an exciting new talent, which to blizzards defense, is incredibly hard. I believe they really try to put as many exciting passives and spells they can into the talent trees without homogenizing the classes. So, reducing the overall size of the trees makes sense to me.

My only concern is, how many possible talent points you can spend in each tree, ie how specialized in each individual tree you can be. For example they said you would have 42 points to spend by 85...will there will 40 points of talents in each tree....50? I realize there is not a ton of specialization in each tree as is, but I hope this new, shorter talent tree won't make spending points a no-brainer since you can't put points into other trees, and hopefully does not allow for more cookie-cutter builds. Choosing talents within your tree should be hard, and makes things more fun, hopefully there is still some options you get in choosing talents, as opposed to just having enough points for everything.

But I guess we shall have to wait and see for that.

[Arandmoor]

I don't see it that way. What I read is that each tree will be 31 points. You will have to put a full 31 points into a tree (until level 70) before you can put points into another tree. What this tells me is that every combat rogue will be exactly the same. No customization. No variety. I don't see how this is an improvement at all. Makes it kinda boring if you ask me.

With as much as GC throws around the terms "choice", "meaningful", and "decision", how the hell did you come to that conclusion unless you're just trying to fear-monger? Or is this just your first time reading anything about cataclysm?

I mean, if you completely lacked perspective I could understand. Otherwise, you're just being kinda stupid...

[Nipo]

Read the full thing and you will understand. I think it will work and we can't start saying it's crap if you haven't even see it. Some people are so afraid of changes that as soon as they say something in game will be different they start complaining.

[evan_s]

I don't see it that way. What I read is that each tree will be 31 points. You will have to put a full 31 points into a tree (until level 70) before you can put points into another tree. What this tells me is that every combat rogue will be exactly the same. No customization. No variety. I don't see how this is an improvement at all. Makes it kinda boring if you ask me.

Reread it they said 31-point talents not 31 talent points. Just look at the current trees. We've got 51-point talents currently but there are a lot more than 51 points available in each tree. I can guarantee that they aren't making trees that you have to pick one which then automatically fills up because you get as many points as there are talents in the trees.

[Nzo]

This kind of change is what i wanted to see in cata, hell yes about time! good on ya blizzard

[Daltain]

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

Translation: "I can't read. Whaaaaaahhhh"

[cannibalghoul]

ill wait to test it out before i come to conclusions, but it looks very interesting

[fangless]

Reread it they said 31 point talents not 31 talent points. Just look at the current trees. We've got 51 point talents currently but there are a lot more than 51 points available in each tree. I can guarantee that they aren't making trees that you have to pick one which then automatically fills up because you get as many points as there are talents in the trees.

What this guy said.

Reading comprehension ftw.

Think of it this way, original WoW had 31 point talents in each tree.

[Nymeria]

I'm not sure if this is a great idea. Gotta see that on a live server first.
But when will they release cataclysm? 2012? Seems there's still much work to be done.

[RoneZone]

wow, with them changing everything, i hope that the game doesn't suck.

[Semiraghe]

Some important information people seem to be missing is that the trees are going to be 31 points deep, not 31 points. Blizzard even said the following.

"and aesthetically will look a bit more like the original World of Warcraft talent trees"

Those trees were 31 points deep if I remember correctly, but you still had other places to put your 31 points. Thus the important thing to rmember here is that to get the last talent in the tree you will have to put 30 points in, just like you have to put the 50 points in now. They might be saying that you have to take the last talent to get the other trees but I'm reading it as your tree will just be 31 deep.

Now I could be wrong and I think blizzard made a mistake in not releasing some trees to go with this annoucment. They could have answered a lot of questions right there. I think this has the potential to be really good from a couple of perspectives.

1. It makes talents you choose more fun. More fun is more better. It could turn out this fails and just is a cookie cutter creater, but I'm hoping not.

2. I think it helps the casuals, which helps you. This one requires a bit more explanation, but it boils down to the fact that you have someone play a certain way for 40 to 60 levels and then it suddenly changes with one new skill. Giving you those early skills early on lets you learn how to play the way you are going to play at end game. Thus the casuals who don't read forums like this are going to understand their class role better due to less drastic changes by getting those changes early. If they understand their role better they are going to play better, which makes your raids and bgs better.

Edit: I feel like they should change the lock in. Perhaps allow you to put 1 point in the other trees for every 2 points you spend in your spec tree. This keeps you from being ret build with a prot spec for the bonus like they are trying with the lock in, but allows you to pick up useful talents earlier if you want.

[Malthanis]

After going through the first four pages and seeing the same relative back-and-forth, I'll drop my two copper in the pot.

A complete and total overhaul of the talent system isn't particularly surprising. They're overhauling the basic mechanics of the game, why not overhaul one of the defining features of the game as well? For those of you crying about the loss of your 'specs' that don't utilize a full tree; you're complaining based on knowledge of the current talent system. You have no idea how the new talents will be set up or the abilities you'll get just by being X/Y/Z spec of a class.

As for the RealID forum bit... meh? There's no way it'll hit production. At least not where everyone in the world could see your name. It'll probably be more of a port from the current set-up in-game, and they'll limit it to your RealID friends that can see your real name, and everyone else would see a nickname of your choosing.

[h3lladvocate]

I'm not looking forward to these changes for a couple of reason. First of all, I believe this allows for less customization rather than more. Only have 31 talent points allowed for a tree, unless each talent is a 1 or 2 point max talent, there is going to be a clear cut winner, and you wont have the talents to spare to pick up something "fun".

Another problem I feel this has is, for example, I love the current Disc tree. It has a lot of fun and interesting talents. A few mandatory ones, but still, Borrowed Time, Archangel, PI, and so many other talents are really cool. I just don't see it being possible to take that tree, make it into a 31 point tree. And add some more "filler fun" talents and still get the same affect plus some fun, non-dps/heal/tank talents to choose from and NOT lose anything valuable in the tree.

Lastly, this is just bad PR on blizzards fault. All the feedback, including mine is made of assumptions. And since change almost always adheres to bad assumptions, everyone gets mad at blizzard. They should of at least released 2-3 example talent trees so we know what they are talking about and we can compare and see if this would actually work well. Right now, most of us, including me, are assuming there will still be lots of 5/5 talents and with only 31 points per tree, 40ish points total at 85, there will be little to no customization, and I don't like that. In fact, the talent system is one of the best features of WoW over other MMO's. Not many others have such a high level of customization where there are 3 different tree's per class and dozens of way to play each tree, although not all ways are widely accepted. I think we'll just have to wait and hope blizzard knows that the hell they are doing... This could make or break cataclysm in my opinion.

[elrenno]

It seems that a lot of people that disagree with this change did not read the whole post and/or put words into Blizz's mouth. I think this is an amazing change. Leveling a new character has never been very exciting skill wise. I mean, once you hit level 10, a lot of classes only had choices to start putting talents into the "Increases the damge you do with x by x%". BORING. When you level a toon talent points are only exciting if you are putting them into a fun talent, which many of them are not atm. Our talent trees are bloated and need to be trimmed down. I heard someone say something to the effect of "I used to look forward to spending talents points each time I level and now I will get nothing!" Well, this is not true at all. They said they are going to alternate getting new skills and talent points. And if we are honest, most of the time new abilities are more interesting then a talent point to increase your damage by 1%.

But you are still going to be getting talent points every other level that will be more meaningful then they ever were. As far as Blizz forcing you to go down one tree till 70, it seems this is mainly done for new players. Sure there is more freedom at the moment to spec however you want, but imagine how this can be for new players. SO many options with no real guidance as what to do. Correctly spent talents can be the difference between a great leveling experience and a bad one. I welcome this change also and cant wait to actually have fun and meaningful abilities at level 10. I mean, shadow step and lava lash at leve 10? How awesome is that? And it totally makes leveling a character much more engaging and playable. Kudos to Blizz on making this much needed change. People need to realize that more does not equal better.

On another note, I saw someone say that now you just have to sit back and watch the talent trees fill themselves out? WTF? Did you even read the post? It said nothing of the kind in there, you will still have to choose all your talents. You will just be restricted to one tree until level 70. And people are actually claiming that trimming the fat from our bloated talent trees and making points more meaningful and exciting is catering to casuals? If making my low level toons more fun to play by giving them things like shield slam and mutilate is catering to casuals, bring on the casuals then.

The problem I've read here is that each tree will be 31 points. You will have to put a full 31 points into one tree before you can put points into another tree. So that means that every combat rogue will be exactly the same, talent-wise. No picking and choosing. I feel like this pigeon holes everyone into a specific type of game play.

I'd rather see something that says you have 10 talents to pick from, choose 6. Or something like that. Then, as a fury warrior, I could have talents that make me somewhat unique.

I'm just not crazy about this setup they've proposed.

[Nomm]

i approve.

[ComputerNerd]

Interesting concept, and a very brave and bold move to throw out what they have been expanding upon for the last 6 years.
This is not lazy as some seem to think. Lazy was adding more and more onto the existing trees bloating them more and more every time.
Certainly the lack of a point per level will be missed with it being seen as something to aim for, but levelling should be about more than just getting the next point.
Locking into a tree has potential, particularly when you get that bonus as a result of it, just it will lock you out from other useful talents as someone brought up the subject of Omen of Clarity.
Taking longer to reach your signature, and often pretty damn useful end-talent is not likely to be a popular move, and I hope there is enough in the tree to provide sufficient utility for your role to make up for that.
As to how well it will work out, we have to see, but most of you should stop flaming an idea which you do not like, before we have even seen it, and providing no arguement whatsoever other than your opinion.

[Gerian]

I like these changes. For awhile I thought something like this was going to have to happen if they were truely going to remove passive talents. Cuz the other alternative is them replacing every boring passive talent with an exciting new talent, which to blizzards defense, is incredibly hard. I believe they really try to put as many exciting passives and spells they can into the talent trees without homogenizing the classes. So, reducing the overall size of the trees makes sense to me.

My only concern is, how many possible talent points you can spend in each tree, ie how specialized in each individual tree you can be. For example they said you would have 42 points to spend by 85...will there will 40 points of talents in each tree....50? I realize there is not a ton of specialization in each tree as is, but I hope this new, shorter talent tree won't make spending points a no-brainer since you can't put points into other trees, and hopefully does not allow for more cookie-cutter builds. Choosing talents within your tree should be hard, and makes things more fun, hopefully there is still some options you get in choosing talents, as opposed to just having enough points for everything.

But I guess we shall have to wait and see for that.

I think the general idea is to cut all the mandatory talents out (brain dead stuff like Cruelty, core tree abilities such as Mortal Strike) and move them to passives through specialization so that you're given more talent options at each tier level. It'd give you the opportunity to take talents that you wanted but had to ignore to flesh out your 51/x/20 spec in WotLK.

[Genju]

There is not a single bad thing about the changes.
They get rid of all "You deal x% more dmg,y%crit", aka all the talents u had to skill to not get called "n00b","rofl how u skilled",......
and its not like you lose those which separates you as a DD from a non-DD spec, cause u get them passivly.

With this system leveling a twink is way more entertaining, and nearly every talent point u get is like "oh hey now i get a funny new talent" and not like "hey i got a lvl up, yay now i put my third talentpoint in a row in +1% dmg "/cheer" .

About the commitment to spend all 31 points in a row in a talent tree:
who doesnt do this atm? 99% of all twinks go all out in one talent tree to get the one special active skill you need to level more satisfied. Now u get it from the start. -> big improvement.

[Coldkil]

that's a pretty big change, i need to see it in the game, before saying anything.

it seems good, but anything can happen.