Official expansion talent previews

[Mavfin]

It's not a problem, I was merely pointing out some of the advantages of protection vs. non-protection tanking that people seemed to thing was a small point. People seem to think that the new talents are a very small factor in tanking ability, but I think it will bring a pretty significant threat advantage to protection tanks. Your points are right along with my line of thought.

The only caveat to all this, is that *very* few warriors will ever get that deep in the protection tree. Too little e-peen potential for a lot of players. "ZOMG, I can't do 400 DPS with this build! It suxxorz!" I will go that deep, by my own choice. I'm not generally depended on to do much DPS. And, Conc, I know you're not telling me this, but I get so tired of 'the conventional wisdom' that putting more than 15 points in prot is 'stupid', and 'crippling'. I've also had some of those same 15-point protection tanks tell me that 8/8 Might is better than Wrath because they *need* that extra aggro the set bonus generates. Huh? L2P!:D:D

(Not you, Frag)

[Quark]

It's a bit early to start slinging about terms like incompetent. You are making a huge assumption that crit % will be maintained in the expansion. I'm not at all sure that will be the case.

I don't feel it is. Removing the leaked Shadowstrikes was a reactionary measure -> their fans did the math, seeing how good the talent is. Blizzard immediately goes "whoa, if they're this happy, something must be wrong." So they go to change it, and again don't run the math. When can the Rogues expect a change that is mathematically sound the first time, before the players run the numbers themselves?

Also, even Sinister Strike's DPE (damage per energy) goes down with this talent. Since they have 30% less crit, their DPE only goes down by less than a percent, instead of about 1.2%. I can garauntee you I'll be staying above SS's current crit rate with Backstab.

In addition, missing a BS you are counting on for a CP to keep your cycle operating optimally could hurt you more then 2 dps.

No, it doesn't. Since the patch Combat Daggers was easily able to grab 3/3 SnD. This has enough built in slack that the dodged Backstabs are not a concern, really. Low Time on Target is the only thing that prevents me from keeping SnD up.

[Concillian]

Interesting Tidbit: Anyone who grabs Suprise Attacks, as it stands, lowers their DPS. Run through a small script:
I though it was bad (as in completely not worth going for) before. Now that I've seen this (the key is dodged Backstabs take very little energy), I realize it's borderline incompetent.

Mutilate also doesn't look so great...

Requires daggers, attacks with main hand and offhand simultaneously, gives 2 combo points.

Assuming equal weapon damage in MH and OH + 5/5 Dual wield spec., that's 175% damage + 2 combo points.

Compare to backstab:
170% weapon damage (assuming 5/5 opportunity)
+30% higher chance to crit if you have improved backstab.

so is 5% more damage + 1 combo point and loss of facing restrictions worth giving up +30% chance to crit?

I don't have proof, but it seems like at the very least it's worth the talent point flexibility to go with backstab (able to go weapon expertise for raiding or MoD for PvP) since mutiliate seems like it requires 41 assassination / 20 combat to be even comparable to backstab.

[TheWesson]

The problem that I see with the way they're handling threat is akin to taking away Feint from the Rogues and telling them to use Vanish to deal with threat or take Hemorage to get a threat reduction for raiding purposes. They need to make threat reduction more viable for Warlocks and only a 10% reduction for Affliction and 10% reduction for Destruction still forces Warlocks to go to MD if they want serious threat reduction. Why is it that all the other classes have threat reduction talents that give them 20% reduction at lower tiers in the trees, but still force Warlocks to go deep into one tree to get 20% reduction? This shows that they looked at the "wishtlist", but didn't understand what Warlocks were talking about.

The fact that they also continue to add more and more DoTs shows that they fail to realize how a soloing Warlock plays. As it was before, a Warlock had to lay down their DoTs in a very specific order with very specific timing for Blueberry to hold aggro. With the increase in the number of DoTs, they effectively will force the Warlock into Drain Tanking and thus relegating Blueberry to being a shield.
This will only be useful to a soloing Warlock. To a raiding Warlock, the chances of getting the killing blow will go down significantly. Case in point, during a run on any given raid instance, I maybe get 5 to 6 killing blows out of a couple hundred kills. Overall, that's not going to help that much in maintaining my mana.
Threat reduction for MD has always been multiplicative. So there has been no change in threat for Warlocks in that sense. Blizzard hasn't understood what the real problems are for Warlock, they're just making changes to make it look like they understand.

The other problem, as I stated above, is there are too many DoTs now. For a Soloing Warlock, this is making it nigh impossible for Blueberry to hold aggro and for the Raiding Warlock, this means that they've practically doubled the number of slots that they can take up in debuff slots. I can pretty much guarentee with the DoT happiness that Blizzard is going through there will be another call to increase the number of debuff slots. Prior to coming out with these talents and spells, the 40 debuff limit looked like it was going to be perfect allowing for all classes to put up their debuff on the mobs without anyone really fighting over debuff real estate, now with the number of DoTs Warlocks are going to have along with the various Debuffs other classes are getting as well, everyone is going to be fighting over who gets how many DoTs.

The other problem that Blizzard hasn't tackled at all is the fact that the demon talents don't scale. Once you top out at 70, your pets don't improve while you do through gear. In effect, the demons just become an extension of spells with not real purpose outside those spells they have (Blood Pact, Seduction, Sacrifice, Devour Magic, and Spell Lock). Instead they should roll all the demon talents into one talent making it require 5 talent points and make it improve all demon powers by 5% per level starting at 10% (so 10, 15, 20, 25, 30) and thus allow for a little more creativity in the Demonology tree.

I just look at the Talent layouts and the new spells and think that Blizzard really didn't put much thought into the Warlock talents at all like they did with the other classes.

Soloing with the Voidwalker? Hmm. Isn't your basic grinding build either Dark Pact or Demonic Sacrifice(VW)? I just open with Shadow Bolt, Immolate, and 3x DoTs and ignore that mob while I put 3 DoTs on another.

It's my opinion that the Voidwalker can't hold aggro against any mob you're actually damaging fast enough to be 'grinding' and his only use is to hold off a mob you've left basically untouched if you pulled one mob too many.

Anyhow your post does remind me - what about the poor Succubus and Voidwalker? The Imp is made more viable with Mana Feed (OOM being his main problem) but if there's something that makes the Succ and Voidwalker good pets for solo-60-farming (let alone instances) I missed it. I guess Mana Feed helps there too, but Blue is just not well suited to his ostensible role, tanking. Neither is the Succ's DPS significant post-60, even though she is the melee-DPS pet.

One thing that Demonology needs is something that improves pets with your gear, somehow. A talent or
talents that adds a % of your HP and/or some of your +dam to the pet.

I agree that the 2 new debuffs will probably not find a place in raids. Can't have a Warlock using 5-6 debuff slots out of 40, really. But each Warlock should be able to get a Curse and Corruption (or other magic debuff) on the target, and that's a good thing.

....

Random thought: Maybe Curse of Weakness is somewhat overlooked. One CoW is somewhat pathetic (30 dam out of 900 = 3% dam red), but have 3 locks doing amped CoW and you've taken almost 150 from every hit. Healers should be able to appreciate that.

[Quark]

Mutilate also doesn't look so great...

Mutilate being two tiers deeper than Seal Fate into Subtlety just doesn't make sense to me. Seal Fate builds don't need combo points, Combat Dagger is really the only combo-point restricted build.

[Malakar]

One thing we all agree on is that pets need to scale post-cap somehow. That relates to the fact that the VW's threat gen is pathetic at this point in the game, which is the problem for grinding with a VW. They could have book drops like the level 60 spell ranks, or they could directly tie it to some essential lock stat like spell damage.

As for the raid slots, I don't think any given lock is going to want to put up 4 DoTs and spam Shadow Bolt. You'd pull aggro very quickly like that anyway, so I don't see the debuff slots being that huge of an issue.

[Xanthix]

Random thought: Maybe Curse of Weakness is somewhat overlooked. One CoW is somewhat pathetic (30 dam out of 900 = 3% dam red), but have 3 locks doing amped CoW and you've taken almost 150 from every hit. Healers should be able to appreciate that.

Random nit: only one instance of each curse can be on a mob at the same time. If one lock uses CoW, any other locks casting CoW will overwrite it. Otherwise you could get multiple Curse of Elements/Shadows on the same mob.

[TheWesson]

Random nit: only one instance of each curse can be on a mob at the same time. If one lock uses CoW, any other locks casting CoW will overwrite it. Otherwise you could get multiple Curse of Elements/Shadows on the same mob.

I'm pretty sure I've seen 2x CoA (from different locks) on the same target. But you're saying CoW doesn't stack? "A more powerfull spell is already present"?

if so --- nuts!

[Lissa]

I'm pretty sure I've seen 2x CoA (from different locks) on the same target. But you're saying CoW doesn't stack? "A more powerfull spell is already present"?

if so --- nuts!

CoA and CoD are the exclusions, not the rules. All other curses are one and one only.

[Lissa]

Soloing with the Voidwalker? Hmm. Isn't your basic grinding build either Dark Pact or Demonic Sacrifice(VW)? I just open with Shadow Bolt, Immolate, and 3x DoTs and ignore that mob while I put 3 DoTs on another.

It's my opinion that the Voidwalker can't hold aggro against any mob you're actually damaging fast enough to be 'grinding' and his only use is to hold off a mob you've left basically untouched if you pulled one mob too many.

Anyhow your post does remind me - what about the poor Succubus and Voidwalker? The Imp is made more viable with Mana Feed (OOM being his main problem) but if there's something that makes the Succ and Voidwalker good pets for solo-60-farming (let alone instances) I missed it. I guess Mana Feed helps there too, but Blue is just not well suited to his ostensible role, tanking. Neither is the Succ's DPS significant post-60, even though she is the melee-DPS pet.

One thing that Demonology needs is something that improves pets with your gear, somehow. A talent or
talents that adds a % of your HP and/or some of your +dam to the pet.

I agree that the 2 new debuffs will probably not find a place in raids. Can't have a Warlock using 5-6 debuff slots out of 40, really. But each Warlock should be able to get a Curse and Corruption (or other magic debuff) on the target, and that's a good thing.

The problem with that is what about the Warlocks coming up to 60 that haven't raided? There's still going to be looking Dungeon Set 2 as their best setup for gear and with the additional DoTs, Blueberry has even less chance of holding aggro. Those Warlocks that don't have the raid instance gear will have more downtime grinding if they use DS because they won't be getting back as much Health as a raid geared Warlock and also will be spending more mana casting spells as their +damage isn't as high to kill the mobs sooner.

And I agree, Demonolgy does need a talent(s) that scales the pets better. The three individual talents don't allow the pets to scale. Maybe they should change Fel Intellect and Fel Stamina to pull a percentage of your Int and Stamina onto the pets.

[Malakar]

And I agree, Demonolgy does need a talent(s) that scales the pets better. The three individual talents don't allow the pets to scale. Maybe they should change Fel Intellect and Fel Stamina to pull a percentage of your Int and Stamina onto the pets.

That would be nice. I'd like to see a basic % of character Sta/Int go to the pets, with Fel Stamina/Int improving on that base.

They could solve the lack of pet skill upgrades by book drops, which could solve the VW threat problem.

Not sure how pet melee damage would scale post-cap. I suppose tying it to spell damage would work, even though it doesn't "make sense" (which should not be the first priority). I suppose they could do quests for it which are tied to certain raid instances.


Ultimately capped raiding needs to improve pets whether you spec demonology or not, just like leveling did before you capped. Demonology should simply improve on your pets further.

[Lissa]

That would be nice. I'd like to see a basic % of character Sta/Int go to the pets, with Fel Stamina/Int improving on that base.

They could solve the lack of pet skill upgrades by book drops, which could solve the VW threat problem.

Not sure how pet melee damage would scale post-cap. I suppose tying it to spell damage would work, even though it doesn't "make sense" (which should not be the first priority). I suppose they could do quests for it which are tied to certain raid instances.

Why not? They're being of magic, why shouldn't +damage improve them?

[Concillian]

Paladins

Next it looks like there's some intention for builds with some Retribution to tank. There's a talent to boost healing done to targets with the Sanctity Aura on. Paladin tanking works by doing Holy damage so this boosts both the amount of threat the Paladin generates as well as the healing done to him. If you're using a Warrior to tank Improved Sanctity Aura would be a slightly odd choice since giving him Defiance or a resist aura would probably work better than boosting his heals and the healers' threat by 6%

Well prot / retribution looks like a traditional tanking build, but there are some nice holy talents that will help with tanking too... reduces damage done by 50% when you are less than 20% health, for example. When you look at the holy tree with tanking in mind, you see some talents that have decent dual purpose for a raid healer / buffer / cleanser that can also tank.

To me, it looks like they've done some good things with the paladin trees, I like seeing multiple ways of achieving similar purpose.

[Kevin]

Well prot / retribution looks like a traditional tanking build, but there are some nice holy talents that will help with tanking too... reduces damage done by 50% when you are less than 20% health, for example. When you look at the holy tree with tanking in mind, you see some talents that have decent dual purpose for a raid healer / buffer / cleanser that can also tank.

To me, it looks like they've done some good things with the paladin trees, I like seeing multiple ways of achieving similar purpose.

Yeah, the current paladin tanking almost does better being 31 holy anyway. Not for damage reduction but for aggro generation which is still the weak point of pally tanking. 31 holy/20 prot allows some decent burst aggro with holy shock and judged righteouness along with improved seal or righteousness. You can slap on warrior gear and go retribution + prot to up the melee damage which gives more sustained aggro generation but less burst.

But I'm kinda liking the paladin trees. I still think a shaman will be more fluid of a hybrid toon (just like they are now) but it does look like they are giving the pally a bit more usefulness than a rare stun and healbot.

[oldmandennis]

It's a bit early to start slinging about terms like incompetent. You are making a huge assumption that crit % will be maintained in the expansion.

I don't feel it is. When can the Rogues expect a change that is mathematically sound the first time, before the players run the numbers themselves?

Never. It woln't happen ever. No alpha (or beta) will have numbers that are spot on. That is the whole point of having them. Over the past 2 years they have done pleanty of stuff you can call incompetent. Showing you some alpha talents without putting it in the context of gear, encounter design, or combat mechanics is not one of them.

And there are a whole pool of mechanics that need to be adjusted. Many have gotten distorted by the fact that bliz clearly didn't plan for level 90 gear on level 60 characters. Weapon skill/glancing, crit, downranking, mp5/5 sec rule. They may even (gasp!) make finishers other then SnD relevent again, which would mean that missing a combo point is actually a big deal.

[Quark]

Never. It woln't happen ever. No alpha (or beta) will have numbers that are spot on.

I'm not asking for something that's spot on. I'm asking for something that doesn't do the opposite of its intention. That's not hard.

[oldmandennis]

I'm not asking for something that's spot on. I'm asking for something that doesn't do the opposite of its intention. That's not hard.

And I'm saying you have to wait until beta to call the talent a failure, and until about 2 weeks before release to call them incompetent.

Besides, the new combat talents look mostly PvP oriented to me, and it seems like not being dodged (especially on gouge) would be a very good thing there. In addition, in smaller raids stunlocking will be more viable, and this talent would help with that.

Also, as well as continuing to assume that crit will be as easy to obtain, you assume that capping +hit is also obtainable. That can mess up your numbers a bit too.

[Concillian]

This is what I'm looking at as a new hybrid protection / damage warrior:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...053000100500000

1H spec should essentially increase all DW fury damage by 10%, which is probably as much or more boost to pure DPS than the entire bottom of the fury tree. Also, I always liked imp. sunder for soloing when I was protection spec as it multiplies damage again so significantly (5x sunder is like 20-30% more damage), that should be a nice addition to DW fury as well... at least for soloing, and it's obviously a great tanking talent.

You have access to all the great protection mitigation talents for tanking, with flurry providing at least a portion of the extra threat generation you miss out on from the bottom of the protection tree.

This is an exciting "hybrid" spec to me. It should offer significantly more DPS relative to real DPSers than the current "hybrid" spec of 5/15/31 and also offer better tanking talents than 5/15/31.

I guess it's time to start worrying about 1H weapons... good thing I've kept a few stashed away =P.

[Icebird]

I really hope the Burning Crusade is going to contain the changes to rage generation mechanics the CMs keep alluding to every time the Tactical Mastery issue comes up. By itself, moving TM from Arms to Protection doesn't solve the basic problem that almost every warrior feels obligated to dump enough points in the tree to get TM. Retaining at least some rage while stance shifting should be a basic skill available to all warriors, with a perhaps a talent to increase the amount of rage retained.

I've played a warrior without TM and one with TM, and I wouldn't play a talent spec without it right now. They changed Arcane Exploision, they can change Tactical Mastery...

Now on to warlocks:

My warlock is Demology specced for now, and I recently completed the Nemesis set (20% less threat from destruction spells). My blueberry can actually tank now. Not "hold the mob in place for a little before losing aggro", but actually tank the mob until they're dead. When I was testing it, I had to spam searing pain to pull aggro away.

For warlocks I anticipate seeing a lot more specialization. Affliction locks are going to become a lot more popular in PvP with even more DoTs to throw around - especially the Seed of Corruption + Unstable Affliction combination. Do you dispel and do 1000 damage to yourself, or leave it, and do 1000 damage to the rest of the group?

For demonology, I'm hoping the Felguard will be pet that the Infernal and Doomguard promised to be, but weren't. Where you place the relative power of the Felguard vs the enslaved pets is a good combination. It *is* a 41 point talent after all. A pet that would be useful in raids for more than just passive buffing would also be nice.

Mana feed? Yes please! Anyone who's used the Void Walker a lot knows the biggest issue isn't health recovery (with Health Funnel and Consume Shadows), but their mana regen rate. Now you cast a couple of Life Taps and they are at full mana again.

At the moment I'm leaning towards a Demonology / Destruction combination for levelling but we'll see.

Chris

[Drasca]

One CoW is somewhat pathetic (30 dam out of 900 = 3% dam red

Worse than that. I believe it is damage before armor's phys reduction gets applied. So if someone has 60% phys damage armor reduction, CoW is barely reducing over 10 damage.

Lissa's pretty much covered everything I thought about the new changes. Warlocks & Warriors need a real review.

Plus, as I see Destructive reach, it is currently one of the few threat reducers, but 15 talent pts deep into the destruct tree, is also going to be cookie cutter for raiders. Ugh. I don't like cookie cutting.