07.14
The Big News
Recently Blizzard announced plans to trim some loose branches from the talent trees in an attempt to overhaul the trees altogether. They also reduced the number of talents a character has available and how quickly we gain them . At level 85 each character has 41 Talent points to spend – the kicker is you absolutely HAVE to spend 31 in your tree of choice. No more Hybrid specs…
Increasing Options by Severely Limiting Them
With less total points to spend each talent point becomes more valuable. This will presumably be a challenge to developers when it comes to balance, but also in that we need to have meaningful options. The big promise with this change is that we’ll be losing a lot of fat and keeping the good stuff. Judging by the current (and incomplete) Death Knight trees, I’m hopeful. They’ve economized by getting rid of “bonus” filler like Improved Rune Tap and simply baking the Improved into the basic talent. So now for one point in Rune Tap you get an ability that heals you for 20% of your health with a 30 second cooldown.
These changes are bound to have significant impact on what talents become popular. In the case of Rune Tap there has long been a division between players on whether it’s too expensive to be worthwhile or as I’ve always put it, “It’s a freaking heal pot on steroids you can use over and over in a single fight!” Now we have the super version for a single point AND it’s synergy with the newly reworked Will of the Necropolis which, when procced refreshes a Blood Rune and finishes the Cooldown on your Rune Tap. Add to this a mastery bonus that gives us damage absorption everytime we heal ourselves. All that together results in: if you don’t have Rune Tap and you’re a Blood Tank – you are doing it WRONG!
One interesting thing to note is that some of your favorite and essential tanking talents are now baked into the tree, meaning that when you choose your primary tree you get access to those abilities immediately. What does Blood get?
+ Blood
A dark guardian who manipulates and corrupts life energy to sustain himself/herself in the face of an enemy onslaught.
» Veteran of the Third War (Currently a 3 Point Talent)
» Death Rune Mastery (Currently a 3 Point Talent)
» Heart Strike (Currently a 1 Point Talent)
» Vengeance (Mastery)
» Healing Absorption (Mastery)
The Bear in the Room
This does beg a question or two though, since we’re now forced to dedicate ourselves to a specific tree – why not give us Crit Immunity with the other abilities rather than spending 2 of our now much more valuable Talent points on Crit Immunity instead? Blame it on Druids, it wouldn’t make sense for Feral cats to have Crit Immunity, and it would probably end up being imbalanced. And it’s not likely that Blizzard will remove the kitties either. However, Ferals in general seem to be problematic in the new system which is why I mention keeping a wary eye their direction – I REALLY don’t know how they’re going to balance Feral at this point.
Back to Death Knights
The new trees are shaping up, but honestly there’s not much outside of the Blood tree to get. It’s more about what you like best in the second tiers of Frost and Unholy. With this few talents to spend outside of Blood it’s not likely you’ll see many 31/5/5 specs running around. More likely you’ll see 31/10/0 or 31/0/10 or some variation. For me it comes down to two talents Morbidity in the Unholy Tree and Lichborne in Frost. Morbidity is great on multiple mobs, Lichborne for the MT is great. So it’s a real toss up, but probably depends on what you end up doing the most. If you’re normally on add duty go for Morbidity. If you’re the guild MT go for Lichborne.
Personally, I’m going with Lichborne. What makes it so great? For starters being immune to Charm, Fear, and Sleep for the duration. And being able to heal yourself with Death Coils (it makes you Undead temporarily). Also Runic Empowerment from the first tier of the Frost tree is likely to be a godsend for tanking with the new rune mechanics.
My Current Death Knight Tanking Spec of Choice – ( here )
Final Thoughts
It’s still a bit early to say a lot about the new talent system, I will say though that I think it has the potential to be really great. As ever I am cautiously optimistic, here’s hoping the end of the world is worth it…
Khaas the Insane
Spec is similar to the one I thought of too, but Lichborne doesn’t seem very friendly since Death Coil healing will still be weak. We’ll still need SoB probably, whether its 1 or 3 I’m not sure yet, but we will so I’m be more inclined to getting Abom’s Might and 1/3 SoB for more Raid Utility as well.
Btw, am I the only one that thinks these Talents are entirely Uniform and we can’t get any of the “Fun Talents’ Blizzard said they wanted us to get last year at BlizzCon ’09? The 51 Point Trees were way more flexible, now they just seem too uniform, gotta choose a main-build, gotta put 31 points in that build before you can do anything else, kinda sucks.
@Insolence – Yeah, mainly I like frost for RE and Lich. I like the idea of having my own fear ward and being able to dump DCs into health. I removed Abom’s from my build a while back simply because we always had an enhance Shaman, but since he’s been MIA I’ve been thinking of going back to Abom’s.
Scent of Blood – Currently I’m not a huge fan of it. But that’s in the current live setting, to me it’s value is contingent on just how many abilities end up costing RP in Cata. For now I’m reserving my thoughts on SoB. As for me, I’ve never had a problem generating RP.
As for the smaller trees, I think you’ve hit it – there’s just not a lot of wiggle room and my initial reaction is skepticism. I can understand why it’s attractive to limit people, it makes specs more predictable from a development standpoint, and therefore easier to balance. But from a player standpoint it’s too predictable and maybe a bit boring.
Here’s hoping…
I really don’t see how the changes add more flexibility or choice if they require 31 pts into any tree. Like you mention, that only leads 10 pts to distribute between the other 2 trees.
You mention yourself that 31/10/0 or 31/0/10 or 31/5/5 will be the dominate specs for tanking DKs. Is it me or does that look more cookie cutter than ever?
While I do think trimming the trees was necessary, I don’t think they have nailed it yet. One fo the virtues of the current system is, around your 31st point, you got a major skill, and at 41st pt, and again at 51st pt. This let people have 51/10/0 or 41/20/0 or 31/30/0 or any variation in between.
Reducing the trees and points can be a good thing, but remove hybrid specs is not. Hybrids define flexibility and freedom of choice.
End rant
We’ve also got a Thread on Pwnwear where someone made a really good post pointing out how this will effectively reduce the amount of mistakes people do while leveling up with Talents, which while this may seem good, it’s also bad because people learn from their mistakes, if every spec is good in Cataclysm because it’s so uniform you have a very high chance of getting nearly (if not all) the Talents you need from your Main Build before going to an Off-Build and Gear is decent there’s more chance of “moronic” players (lack of a better term) which haven’t had a large chance to play around since they’ve been in uniform from level 1 to 85. Right now most people level up with a 71 Build or whatnot, they have no idea what they’re doing. Sometimes they Hit 80 and they ask Trade what to do, sometimes they’re experienced from other MMOs and go for Forums from the beginning, but with Uniform this will drop a lot…
I wonder if Blizz wants to reduce the amount of Guides out there or something (lol!) or just make Theorycrafting easier (do not let it be this…. >.<)
Here's hoping this doesn't reach Live……