10-11-2007, 10:26 PM
Quote:What's wrong with having a clearly defined "PvP-tree"? As far as I know, pretty much all classes have one. Some are more ambiguous than others, but there are some pretty obvious "PvP-abilities" in those specs. Soul Link, Eye for an Eye, Mortal Strike, Shadow Step, The Beast Within, etc.
Warriors - Arms
Rogues - Subtlety
Priests - Shadow
Paladins - Retribution
Druids - Balance
Hunters - Beast Mastery
Warlocks - Demonology
Mages - Frost
Shamans - Uh, I have honestly no idea. Never played a shaman even as far as level 20.
What you're proposing would mean an excessive overhaul of all those classes, as far as I can tell.
Judging by arena ratings, you are way off in most cases.
I think rogues are combat maces (not sure on that), priests are thought to be strongest as 28/33/0 manaburners, though shadow is not bad and is really nice in 2v2 with a lock, pallys are nearly all 41/20/0, resto druids are destroying 2v2 and are mediocre elsewhere, afflocks are very strong but I don't know which is most popular right now, elemental shamans seem to be the most likely, but resto is possible.
But yeah, what I am suggesting would require closely looking at all of the 20-ish trees that remain to make sure that they remain competitive in PvE and PvP.
To me, a clearly defined PvP tree makes the game less fun. When I was gearing up my warrior I would often respec prot to run heroics. While I was in that spec, a whole section of the game was essentially off limits. PvPing as a prot warrior is just unbelievably not fun unless you are in a really tight group - and to the extent that they make BG's more competitive, it will make sucking at them less fun. With respecs at 50g talents doesn't stop people from optimizing or make people more unique - it just makes the game less fun.
Quote: Right now any class has to sacrifice to give up things that would make them more powerful. By condensing the trees from 3 to 2, you're removing that sacrifice whether you admit it or not as there will be people that will analyze the trees to get the most optimal configuration to do their job in PvE or PvP. Right now you have a great deal of trade offs that have to be made in order to get the optimal configuration. Three trees is the perfect situation to bring about several play styles while having an optimal build, but will less possibilities you bring about less options.
I don't know what's so magic about the number 3. It seems artificial to me. This talk of "great sacrifice" doesn't ring true to me. Warriors are limited mostly by the number of points, not by which tree things are in. If you just merged all the arms talents directly into fury (with the exception of MS) it would free up a total of about 5 points of junk from the bottom of arms, and allow one DPS warrior to do optimal DPS while handling blood frenzy. Call it an 8% buff. I think they can tweak warriors back into line after that... or take 8% worth of cool talents and sprinkle them into prot somewhere as goodies for offtanks. Note that you will still need to make *some* sort of pve/pvp/solo choices - there aren't enough points to do max dps and pickup goodies like imp charge and imp intercept. If you give prot MS, maybe the axe/mace/sword spec, and imp hamstring (with a bit of a buff) then you improve their ability to solo and pvp. Neither one of these specs would be overpowered, to the extent that they gain 5-10% in power they can be tweaked back into line somewhere else. Each spec has a clear theme, and can play in all facets of the game.
Quote:Let's not look askance at +500 damage; Although it doesn't make the damage of mindflay like that of a 'real' shadow priest, it does pair well with the kiting aspect of Mindflay to be a little surprise followup to fear for rogues, feral druids, etc. Does it outweigh the value of improved mana burn? Excellent question--we'll see what the Arena decides.
Ferals will shift out of it. Your arguments sound like 1 on 1 arguments - If the priest is allowed to cast, then manaburning the healers would be a better choice then mindflay 85% of the time I'd say, and a single target snare doesn't help much if you have 2-3 people on you.