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Regarding the 5.0.4 talent revamp
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Post by
Liquoid
Hello,
I recently upgraded to Mists of Pandaria after a very long hiatus.
I've checked out the talent trees for the following classes: Rogue, Death Knight, Warlock, Druid, Paladin. I'm going to talk about the Rogue. Mind you, I've always been PvE-oriented, so this post is ignoring any implications the changes have to the PvP side of the game.
So far, the one impression I have is that there is much less diversity the talent trees offer themselves. Not only that, the gear choice seems to be far more homogenous (call it streamlined if you will) than in previous expansions.
Take WotLK Rogue, for example. The spec that you'd raid with was heavily dependant on the gear that you acquired throughout the tier. Entry level T7 raiders went into Naxx with a Combat spec, as it was more suitable for heroics. They then changed their spec accordingly either to Sub to abuse Honor Among Thieves on Patchwerk, or to Mutilate if they got Webbed Death and Librarian's Paper Cutter. Even though Librarian's Paper Cutter was blue in quality (rare), it was still good enough due to its fast speed (1.3).
However, once you'd beat Kel'Thuzad and got your hands on a Calamity's Grasp, you'd switch back to Combat due to the cleave and AoE. A rogue with CG would usually carry it for a long time into T8, as many did.
After T7 stats scaling and over-abundance of them on the gear became apparent. By T8 ArP was gaining weight on the EP scale, you either soft-capped your ArP and dropped Rupture from your rotation or you were behind on the meters. Mutilate was arguably out of the window and wasn't as relevant as Combat during T9 and T10.
By the time Cataclysm came, ArP got scrapped. The meta-game shifted not to specific pieces of gear your had or didn't have access to, as well as those pieces that you had access to but just WOULDN'T drop (Mjollnir's Runestone, Golden Saronite Dragon and Havok's Call, I'm looking at you), but to reforging. And with this re-vamp, so many talents got consolidated into passive spells on the back pages of your Spellbook, that all you get to see is PvP talents in that second tab. Most of your choise is now made by picking the spec - one button gets you up to 20 spells that define your rotation, your gear choice and your EP weights. The specialisation tab does it all now, and the talents are nothing more than a selection of minor perks.
This makes me sad.
Now, here's the thing. I haven't levelled the rogue to 90, I haven't raided at 90. I am looking forward to see replies from those of you who played T14. Is the homogenisation of talents actually good?
Post by
678294
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Post by
331902
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Ahmi
I am currently playing Mage. I'm dissatisfied with my level 90 talents, since instead of getting a new cool mechanic, we got a mobility limiter.
Except for that, I feel that these changes are very good. It's not "homogenisation". How many times were you actually faced with a choice in the previous talent system? Usually you had a core build which you couldn't change, and, depending on your spec, a few leftover points. These points ultimately didn't mean too much.
With the current talent system, you get everything that was included in these "core builds" passively, and then you actually get to choose something.
Also, you can change talents without going back to trainer, so you can change them for every boss, if you want to.
Of course, the system isn't perfectly balanced yet, but even now you have more choice than you had before.
Post by
Azrile
I think it is slightly better now, but not by much. I think the new system would be better if each spec had their own layout to choose from.
The reason I feel it is a wash with the old system.
1. Most mandatory talents are no given freely at lvl 10. No real difference, I took them before, I get them now
2. A lot of talents now don´t matter at all which one you choose. They are either very very situational or very similar to the point that it doesn´t really matter. My disc priest runs with a talent that gives someone a 25% run speed boost for 4 seconds after I cast PWS on them... sounds great for flagrunners in BGs.. but really, the other choices are not useful for anything.
3. Many are so spec specific that you there is always a wrong choice of the three, and sometimes 2 wrong choices.
4. Then there are the really aggravating ones. I quest with my mage, I don´t pvp or raid. The lvl 90 talents all actually hurt me. I am better off playing at 90 without choosing one ( if you decide not to decide, you still have made a choice!).
I think they would be much better if they were slighty different dependent on spec. Many tiers could remain the same ( self-healing, mvmt ones etc).... but for a lot of classes, especially hybrids, the current set-up just has too many obvious choices.
Post by
331902
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Post by
Astygia
Sup Liquoid, good to see you back.
Shortest answer to the question, is the homogenisation good... it's not bad, but it's not exciting either. Basically you gotta let go of what talents used to 'feel' like and think of them more as minor boosts than the playstyle signatures (and/or nobrainer percentile improvements) they used to be.
Specific to rogues, I remember the wotlk days to which you refer, and no it's really not like that anymore, or at least not so much. The difference in dps between specs simmed on a Patchwerk-esque fight are not so vast as to make one a clear advantage over the others unless you're maximizing for progression. That will probably change as gear levels increase though, and there just aren't a whole lot of Patchwerk fights these days anyway. Combat's still great, but I'm having a lot of fun with mutilate this xpac. Rogues of all spec are not doing so well in PvP at this time though, butjust like the current fotm for pve, I am thinking that'll change as gear levels increase.
Overall, depending on the class I'm playing, the talents are usually useful but on hybrids they often come across feeling like all 3 choices of a given tier were thought up only with a particular spec in mind, making them rather meh assuming you're into one of the two (or 3 if you're a druid) other specs. But then, the origina talentl trees had that going on anyway, so ultimately it's not so bad.
Post by
yukonjack
I like the new talent trees. Mostly I like the functionality of them, being able to swap talents anywhere anytime is great. The rogue trees still feel distinct to me as they definitely determine ability prioritization.
I like to think of the talent trees like this, before mop we had on average 3 talents left over that we could play with and now we have 6.
Post by
Azrile
Entropy, you forgot the part about ´replaces evoc´ on the second one.
You are correct about the third option, I was going by something from beta. In beta,all three of them altered evoc. My mage is soon going to 90, so would have caught that change. But you are right, third option is viable for me.
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