Paradigm Shift

One thing never changes: Subtlety rogue dps is still lolz

I know I'm not the only one looking very hard at the new 31 point talent trees. Apart from Ghostcrawler, I don't think there is anyone very very happy with them. But I think that perhaps we need to look a little harder at the developer's intentions-- particularly at something that may not have been said (yet.)

I think the developers may be setting out to destroy min/maxing. This has not been a stated goal to the best of my knowledge, but most of the statements being made and then the structure of trees themselves seems to show this.



Nevermind the casual players for just a moment, I have to look at this from the direction of a hardcore player for now.

• Player after player I know finds that they have to take a certain number of utility or perhaps damage reduction talents to get what they feel they need in order to raid. Everyone has their sights on two to five talent points they wish they could put "into something more useful."
• Developers are putting direct links between talents that don't necessarily go together. For example, fire mages, to reach Living Bomb, must take a talent point in Dragon's Breath. Raiding fire starters loooove Living Bomb and universally skip Dragon's Breath in current talent builds.
• They keep making talent mechanics that depend on other talents to be useful. I have been getting out to test Telluric Currents for Merinna to really figure out how I feel about it. And I have discovered that I could theoretically get mana back using that talent fairly reliably... If only I can overcome an approximately 42% miss rate. Blizzard has got me covered though... with Elemental Precision way over on the second tier of the elemental tree. So now, it's looking like a situation where one will have to spend 3-5 talent points for one mana back mechanic.

In the end, I'm betting that nobody is going to have what they would consider to be a lean mean talent machine. That's something we are going to have to get used to. No doubt the Elitist Jerks are going to figure out talent builds that are less wasteful (if not "better") and all the douche bags of WoW will get to call the people who aren't using that nubs.

(and don't get me wrong, I read Elitist Jerks all the time. I just don't usually call people Nubs.)

I think it's quickly getting to where we will surely pick our talents based on what we need for raiding but it's going to leave room for us to consider what other mechanic we want to use and plan that into the tree as well. I mean what do we want to do? My head is sorta spinning trying to even phrase that question.

Merinna could go for that mana back build with Telluric Currents but I'll need to commit 8 talent points in the Elemental tree to do that. Or she could go for the improved mobility talent at the second tier of the enhancement tree by committing at least 7 points there. Or she could spend points across the first tier of the other two trees that i think will enhance healing. All three of these have a lot to offer the Raiding Resto, but Mer can't have any two of them. Only one. And to even get one of these mechanics may mean giving up a primary resto talent as well.

Ghostcrawler has called this "needing to make hard decisions" about your specc. Boy, he wasn't kidding. But, before we make those hard decisions, we're going to have to let go of the idea of min/maxing our talent trees. Any build we make is going to have stuff in it that we would have never chosen up to this point