More on Talents in WoW Cataclysm

It’s obviously pretty early to be getting too deep into these kinds of discussions, but it’s damn interesting all the same. Ghostcrawler had this to say on the forums recently (source):

We’re not going to be able to get all damage out of the trees. For example, Improved Frostbolt, a talent that makes Frostbolt cast faster is essentially a passive damage increase, but it does it in a more interesting way than a talent like Arctic Winds, which grants +Frost damage to keep it from being a PvP only talent.

See I can understand that, not every talent is going to be interesting and dynamic. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get rid of the no brainers. A perfect example would be Cruelty for Warriors. There isn’t a single build at all across the board that DOES NOT have that added 5% to crit. That’s 5 whole points that an be better spent in other places no? The same can be said for Rogues with the 5 point talents that add flat crit/hit/offhand damage and such. There isn’t a single build that doesn’t want these talents.

I don’t know that Improved Overpower will make the cut, since you pretty much always want to Overpower when you can so it isn’t that interesting a talent. Taste for Blood is an interesting talent even though it’s pretty much just more damage at the end of the day. Trauma is not particularly interesting, but it’s an important group buff which makes it marginally more interesting that a talent that just passively improves your own damage. Something like Deep Wounds is tough. It’s pretty passive but it’s also pretty iconic for the Arms tree. If crit chances are lower in Cataclysm, and they will be, then it’s not the no-brainer it is today, but I still can’t imagine an Arms build without it.

This reiterates the fact that talents you feel that you must have regardless of your spec are counter intuitive. We as players want to find the best way to DPS right (or heal or tank) and so everybody ends up following the cookie cutter which defeats the entire purpose in my eyes of 3 different specs. The word spec itself refers to specialization, so what should each tree be specialized in?

Ultimately, what we want to do is just give players a lot more flexibility in how they talent. Some of the trees currently have a “cookie cutter” spec that says something like “Spend the last 3 points wherever you want.” We want to get that feel in all the trees, and hopefully with more like 5-8 points spent wherever you want. We also want to make sure you aren’t able / forced to skip over the utility talents just to get the +damage, healing or survival talents.

So Beast Master, Marksman, and Survival Hunters should all be able to deal mad DPS. The perfect world, BM does all their damage with their pet and their pets should be just unbelievable. Marks should be the mack daddy sniper. Survival should have traps and tools falling off the cart to manipulate and control the environment. Makes sense?