Official expansion talent previews

[Monkey]

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.

The CM comments I've read on tactical mastery have suggested that they want to see unique management strategies, not variations on holding rage in every stance. From my reading, the BC Warrior trees all have different rage generation/management strategies:

Protection--Improved Bloodrage as before, and now also Tactical Mastery and Focused Rage.
Rage Management Strategy: Cool, careful, and efficient use of rage. Tactical mastery and Improved Bloodrage if you have to stance-dance.

Arms--Anger Management, Improved Charge, and Weapon Specializations as before; now also Improved Disciplines, Second Wind, and Endless Rage.
Rage Management Strategy: Control on the field of battle AKA save it up and then blow it out. Second Wind if you get stopped somehow and Endless Rage if you get caught between Charges.

Fury--Unbridled Wrath, Improved Berserker Rage as before; now also Precision and Improved Berserker Stance.
Rage Management Strategy: Beat the crap out of things. Improved Berserker Rage if you need to intercept after Execute.

[Quark]

And I'm saying you have to wait until beta to call the talent a failure

No. Not with the history of the rogue class. Our review would have looked exactly like the first glimpse if we had done nothing about it. Blizzard is showing us time and time again that they have no concept of Rogue balance until they hear back from the players. I don't need to be in game to know how much Suprise Attacks sucks.

~40% damage is Backstabs

60% crit at 2.24x damage (4/5 Lethality) = 1.344
35% hit at 1x damage = 0.35
5% dodge

1.344 + 0.35 = 1.694

60% crit at 2.24x = 1.344
40% hit at 1x damage = 0.40

1.344 + 0.40 = 1.744

(1.744 - 1.694) / 1.744 = .2867

2.867% Increase in backstab DPS

1.147% Increase in total DPS

Those scratch notes took me 5 minutes, and exclude the energy cost modifier. Know what talents provide a bigger DPS increase per point? Opportunity, Improved Slice and Dice (first two points), Improved Backstab, Relentless Strikes, Dual Wield Specialization, Blade Flurry (even versus single targets), Weapon Expertise, Adrenaline Rush all off the top of my head I know provide a bigger increase.

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.

PvP: players already cannot dodge from behind (though mobs can), so there goes half of that advantage. Let's look a little deeper, then.
Shaman: not really a factor.
Mages: not really a factor.
Warlocks: not really a factor.
Priests: not really a factor.
Paladins: small help.
Druids: caster not a factor, cat/bear help.
Warriors: help.
Hunters: help.
Rogues: big help.

... So wait, I'm supposed to be happy about a change where if a Rogue specs it the person that suffers the most is me? Besides the fact that someone who goes 31 points into Combat is not speccing for PvP in the first place.

Additionally, stunlocking in raids is a myth. Stunning helps sometimes, but diminishing returns make a stunlock impossible. And then we're back to the whole useful/required argument. If Blizzard makes getting rid of a 5% non-landing rate on stuns good, then they have a good chance of making it necessary, and forcing spec.

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.

Crit/hit bonus from items is changing in the expansion. I know that much from item screenshots where crit/hit is given a "rating". My guess is for two reasons:
So that, say, 1% crit on an item (which take 29.5 agility at 60 for a rogue to get) would become 1% at 60, but only 0.85% at 70 (which should require 34.4 agility if the pattern continues).
So that an item can have partial crit/hit.

But this is all irrelevant. Others have shown that SS at 30% crit still suffers the same flaw from this talent, just not as much. I have 40% backstab crits from talents, and even if my crit from agi/items is halved I'm left at over 50%. Meanwhile, I have 5% hit from talents. Again, if my %hit is halved I'm still left at +11% hit which is still much more than I need for +3 level mobs.

Drastic changes in the combat system wouldn't remove the flaw in the talent.

[nobbie]

Alchemy :

(Thanks Malan)

New cap - Herb Gathering (Master) : How to find and gather Outland herbs. Gives a potential herbalism skill of 375.

Alchemy Specializations :


Potion Master
Allows an alchemist to sometimes create an additional potion when brewing high level potions.

Transmutation Master
Allows an Alchemist to sometimes to get greater results when transmuting materials.

Elixir Master
Allows an alchemist to sometimes create an additional elixir when brewing high level elixirs.

Flasks :


Flask of Fortification
Increases the player's maximum health by 1500 and Defense Rating by 30 for 2 hour. You can only have the effect of one flask at a time. This effect persists though death.

Flask of Relentless Assault
Increases the player's attack power by 360 for 2 hour. You can only have the effect of one flask at a time. This effect persists though death.

Flask of Mighty Restoration
Increases the player's mana regeneration by 70 mana per 5 seconds for 2 hour. You can only have the effect of one flask at a time. This effect persists though death.

Flask of Shadow Fortification
Increases the player's resistance to shadow spells by 75 and health regeneration by 40 every 5 seconds for 2 hour. You can only have the effect of one flask at a time. This effect persists though death.

Flask of Arcane Fortification
Increases the player's resistance to arcane spells by 75 and health regeneration by 40 every 5 seconds for 2 hour. You can only have the effect of one flask at a time. This effect persists though death.

Potions :


Major Holy Protection Potion
Major Arcane Protection Potion
Major Dreamless Sleep Potion
Major Fire Protection Potion
Major Frost Protection Potion
Major Nature Protection Potion
Major Shadow Protection Potion

Super Healing Potion
Super Mana Potion

Insane Strength Potion
Requires Level 45
Increases your Strength by 120 and decreases your Defense Rating by 75 for 15 sec.

Elixirs :


Elixir of Major Frost Power : Increases frost spell damage by up to 55 for 1 hour.
Elixir of Major Firepower : Increases fire spell damage by up to 65 for 1 hour.
Elixir of Major Agility : Increases your Agility by 35 for 1 hour.
Elixir of Major Armor : Increases armor by 550 for 1 hour.
Elixir of Major Mageblood
Elixir of Empowerment : Decreases the magical resistances of your spell targets by 30 for 1 hour.
Elixir of the Searching Eye :
Elixir of Camouflage: Imbiber cannot be tracked for 1 hour.

Transmutes :


Transmute - Primal Earth to Life
Transmute - Primal Fire to Mana
Transmute - Primal Life to Earth
Transmute - Primal Mana to Fire
Transmute - Primal Shadow to Water
Transmute - Primal Water to Shadow
Transmute: Primal Earth to Water
Transmute: Primal Fire to Earth
Transmute - Primal Air to Fire
Transmute - Primal Water to Air

Transmute - Primal Might
Teaches you how to Transmute Primal Air, Water, Earth and Fire into Primal Might.

Primals are created with a spell "Create Primal XYZ" that uses "10 motes" of earth, shadow, air, etc. Not sure what profession is used to make those or where these items come from.

Engineering apparently has something to do with Alchemy now, my guess is that these two items create the Super Healing/Mana pots. The injectors are listed as requiring the Black Anvil. Good to see that at level 70 we'll still be running BRD.
Schematic: Healing Potion Injector
Schematic: Mana Potion Injector

[Raelynn]

Those alchemy specializations sadden me. Basically, they aren't making any uniqueness to the profession by becoming specialized, but just giving you a chance to get more? That's just pointless. Why can't it be like every other profession where the specializations give you specific recipes?

As another note, why doesn't alchemy or enchanting get you a trinket or item that only that profession can use? (Philosopher's stone doesn't count:P)

[Xanthix]

Those alchemy specializations sadden me. Basically, they aren't making any uniqueness to the profession by becoming specialized, but just giving you a chance to get more? That's just pointless. Why can't it be like every other profession where the specializations give you specific recipes?

It's too early to guess on this. There could easily be recipes only avilable to certain specializations of alchemists, but their linkage to the specializations is not showing up in the data-mined data.

As another note, why doesn't alchemy or enchanting get you a trinket or item that only that profession can use? (Philosopher's stone doesn't count:P)

Enchanting gives you the Smoking Heart of the Mountain, which is a great trinket for feral druids.

[Xanthix]

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.

What I am curious about is what abilities Focused Rage (in Prot) affects. If it affects all attacks, that is a pretty good talent. If it is all battle/berserker abilities, that is kind of lame but it is still a 10-20% rage cost reduction for most warrior DPS abilities.

As for Tactical Mastery, they need to get over themselves and just make it a core ability, enhanced by talents. TM is no less essential to the warrior class than instant Arcane Explosion and Innervate are to their classes.

[lemekim]

As another note, why doesn't alchemy or enchanting get you a trinket or item that only that profession can use? (Philosopher's stone doesn't count:P)

Um they do...

Alchemy gives Philosopher stone, and Enchanting has Smoking Heart of the Mountain (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=10516). You might say they are useless... But aren't pretty much all profession-only specific recipies useless? =(

Edit: Beaten to the punch ;)

[Derek]

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.

Considering Mutilate has +30% crit built in against poisoned targets (though it doesn't appear to be affected by Lethality, oddly enough) and, if it works like other "requires daggers" skills, only requires a dagger in the mainhand (letting you boost Mutilate damage with a slow sword or mace in the offhand), it's probably more competitive than it looks, especially combined with Find Weakness, since it'll give you a lot more combo points to use for finishers than current dagger builds (it looks like with Ruthlessness + Relentless Strikes + Seal Fate + Mutilate, you'll have Find Weakness up almost 100% of the time). Shiv will let you force a poison on the target from the start, too, so you can pretty much guarantee a poisoned state on a poisonable mob. I'm not sure where you got the part about "loss of facing restrictions", though--the Mutilate tooltip says you have to be behind the target.

I don't know if that's enough to compete with combat daggers in raid PvE or not; it might end up like the dagger version of Hemorrhage.

[oldmandennis]

No. Not with the history of the rogue class. Our review would have looked exactly like the first glimpse if we had done nothing about it.

Oh you are the only people who ever get screwed by devs? Or you are just a ton better at whining then priest who don't like lightwell, warriors who want trainable TM, or Pallys who hated thier review? Besides the fact that this is _Alpha_.

I don't need to be in game to know how much Suprise Attacks sucks.

Yes you do. The idea that SnD will be the only finisher that matters should be blown away in the expansion. Combo point should matter. Repeating math that doesn't take into account any of the changes in the game is just a waste of time.

... So wait, I'm supposed to be happy about a change where if a Rogue specs it the person that suffers the most is me? Besides the fact that someone who goes 31 points into Combat is not speccing for PvP in the first place.

Why can't a combat speced person pick up a couple of nice pvp tools? Who says that combat daggers needs to go 41 deep in combat? Who says that combat daggers needs to be the king of the DPS charts still?

Additionally, stunlocking in raids is a myth. Stunning helps sometimes, but diminishing returns make a stunlock impossible. And then we're back to the whole useful/required argument. If Blizzard makes getting rid of a 5% non-landing rate on stuns good, then they have a good chance of making it necessary, and forcing spec.

15 second stun, 15 second evasion, 15 second stun, somebody else comes over to taunt the mob off of you. You can easily picture a 10 mob fight where that could be a good thing. Or when "things go bad ™". It doesn't force it - if you have enhancement shammys or BM hunters they can fill that gap as well. But it makes things more flexible, which is their stated goal.

Crit/hit bonus from items is changing in the expansion. I know that much from item screenshots where crit/hit is given a "raiding".

I can guess too - I think crit has gotten out of hand a bit. It's just another thing that didn't scale properly over ilevel 60-90. I strongly suspect that crit percentage will be far lower in the expansion. But that's irrelevent.

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

I think it sounds great. At about 25% pop an insane strength potion, a trinket, then pop your talent, and go MS slam slam slam MS slam in ten seconds for a gazillion damage to push it into execute range.

I agree, I'm not sure how anyone could conclude that Devestate or Endless Rage are "useless". Endless Rage in particular is just nasty for that last second DPS push to get the boss down. For the cost of 30 rage, you will be able to Mortal Strike, Whirlwind, Slam, Slam, Slam, Mortal Strike, Slam, Slam. Boom, (7 x Weapon Damage) + 600 damage + ~500 damage. Or do the equivalent of Warrior AoE: Endless Rage, Sweeping Strikes, Whirlwind, Mortal Strike, Cleave, Cleave, Cleave, Cleave. THEN factor Windfury Totem into that, which both alliance and horde will have access to now and it just comes obscene.

On top of that, there's no reason the spell shouldn't work with Execute, essentially giving you a free string of extra strength executes if you so choose.

Warrior talents have never been "Oh man, I get to turn invisible and shoot laser beams out of my eyes", they're all about synergistic effects. +5% damage. +5% crit. Cheaper rage cost. The reason it works is because warrior skills, stats, weapons, and talents all synergize incredibly well and do an ass-kicking.

We have no idea how much threat Devestate generates now. I again can't see how someone can dismiss the protection tree - +5% health, -3 rage cost to all offensive abilities, -6% spell damage, +30% damage absorbtion. This is ridiculious. If Improved Sunder Armor and Focused Rage stack, then you will have 9 rage Sunder Armors. Furthermore Devestate has no cooldown. It is infinitely spammable. It's obvious what the ability's role is: rather than endlessly spamming sunder armor once you stack 5 on the enemy, you can now switch to Devestate which costs the same base amount of rage as sunder armor and probably generates the same, if not more threat with 5 sunder armors on the target. And on top of all that, the warrior will now be doing melee damage in addition to generating threat.

Most importantly: The threat he/she generates will be proportional to gear. The big reason why druids can out-threat warriors, the huge flaw with warrior threat generation is at least partially mitigated with this new talent.

This is huge. And if the new priest spells datamined from the alpha (the priest's champion spell that allows a target to tank for the priest essentially) are true, protection warriors will be more than just warriors with slightly higher armor and rage generaton.

Rampage is kind of meh, the cooldown seems a bit high although it obviously synergizes with Blood Thirst well. If I still was a fury warrior though, I'd be more excited about the possibility of being able to finally go Fury/Protection and get tactical mastery. The ability to go 30 points into Fury for Flurry and 31 points into Arms for Mortal Strike is pretty groovy. 2-handed fury with Improved Slam, Mortal Strike, Flurry, Deathwish, Sword Specialization, and Two-handed Weapon Specialization, Improved Overpower... the possibilities have opened up tremendously. 10 additional talent points has huge implications beyond simply the new 41 point talents.

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

Also, the Shaman's Mental Quickness talent wins the prize for best icon. Also wins the prize for "least likely to be re-used for an item".

[Icebird]

If TM was still in the Arms tree I suspect 75% of the warriors around would be specced MS / Flurry.:)

I think Devastate will be an excellent talent. I'm reserving judgment on the other two 41-point talents. 10 seconds is an extremly short period of time; most instant attacks have 5 or 6 second cooldowns, and "next-strike" abilties are governed by weapon speed. Slam suffers from the limitations of being a "cast" spell: it requires the warrior not to move, it can be interrupted by damage, and even if you improve it with talents its subject to global spell cooldown. In my experience Slam is an ability that sounds good in theory, but is terrible in practice.

On the other hand Improved Disciplinesn is nice and the talent that causes Rend or Deep Wounds to increase all melee damage done to the target by 5% is amazing.

Chris

[Raelynn]

Um they do...

Alchemy gives Philosopher stone, and Enchanting has Smoking Heart of the Mountain (http://www.thottbot.com/?i=10516). You might say they are useless... But aren't pretty much all profession-only specific recipies useless? =(

Edit: Beaten to the punch ;)

I forgot about the Smoking heart of the mountain, but I still maintain that the Philosopher's stone doesn't count, as all it does is allow you to transmute. It isn't a trinket, but a reagent essentially.

[Watto44]

/snip/ But aren't pretty much all profession-only specific recipies useless? =( /snip/

Well, except for engineering.

I'm specced goblin, with extra points in grenades and improved explosions.:)

[Descended]

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

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

This may be revealing of my warrior ignorance, but why take Booming Voice over Unbridled Wrath in a dual wield flurry build?

[Frag]

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)

OOOH! I get an exception! /does teh happy dance :D

Mav & I have been back & forth on this and I'm pretty certain we don't see eye to eye but appreciate each other's opinion. Here's kinda how I feel:

A MT's gear AND spec depend on his raid.

If the raid has fantastic healers and people doing ~600 effective hate/second, then Might might be better.
If the raid has good healers and people doing ~400 effective hate/second, then Wrath is likely better.


Anyway, back OT, here's what I'm considering for deep prot in BC: 5/11/45

I do think they'll change Vitality before release, and if it becomes more than 200-300hp for 5 talent points, I'll definately take a look into changing the spec. Who knows... maybe it's worth spending the talent points and not farming Grog & Windblossom berries. :P

Cheers,
~Frag B)

[Xanthix]

I forgot about the Smoking heart of the mountain, but I still maintain that the Philosopher's stone doesn't count, as all it does is allow you to transmute. It isn't a trinket, but a reagent essentially.

Supposedly at one point in beta, Alchemist's could make an Alchemists Stone (http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=17619), a trinket that increased the effects of potions you drink. Just a fun bit of trivia.

[Xanthix]

Slam suffers from the limitations of being a "cast" spell: it requires the warrior not to move, it can be interrupted by damage, and even if you improve it with talents its subject to global spell cooldown.

Improved Slam probably works like the Flash Heal cast time reduction of the prophecy set. The bonus reduces Flash Heal's cast time to 1.4 seconds, AND reduces the global cooldown Flash Heal causes to 1.4 seconds. Improved Slam may reduce the global cooldown Slam causes in such a way that you can still spam Slam.

However Improved Slam is a 21-point talent and so you cannot have it and Endless Rage.

And in my personal opinion, anyone who thinks that Warriors are going to dominate because of using Endless Rage to spam SLAM of all things, has never tried to use Slam in PvP before.

[lemekim]

Improved Slam probably works like the Flash Heal cast time reduction of the prophecy set. The bonus reduces Flash Heal's cast time to 1.4 seconds, AND reduces the global cooldown Flash Heal causes to 1.4 seconds. Improved Slam may reduce the global cooldown Slam causes in such a way that you can still spam Slam.

Sadly, from testing, it only reduces the casting time of Slam, but the Global Cooldown is still there. Compare the Improved Flash Heal effects to Improved Slam. The second effect is what supposedly modifies the global cooldown.

Thus, the biggest limiter to Endless Rage becomes global cooldown rathen than anything else. You can get off about 6 instant abilities in that time, so anything like "Mortal Strike, Whirlwind, Slam, Slam, Slam, Mortal Strike, Slam, Slam" is impossible.

Consider also the fact that Endless Rage costs a significant chunk of rage in the first place, which is counterintuitive to its alleged purpose, and you get a talent that has good intentions (I like the idea itself of this talent), but suffers from poor implementation.

Edit: links didn't show up properly =(

[ZugzwangZeitgeist]

Improved Slam probably works like the Flash Heal cast time reduction of the prophecy set. The bonus reduces Flash Heal's cast time to 1.4 seconds, AND reduces the global cooldown Flash Heal causes to 1.4 seconds. Improved Slam may reduce the global cooldown Slam causes in such a way that you can still spam Slam.

However Improved Slam is a 21-point talent and so you cannot have it and Endless Rage.

And in my personal opinion, anyone who thinks that Warriors are going to dominate because of using Endless Rage to spam SLAM of all things, has never tried to use Slam in PvP before.

I don't think anyone was suggesting Endless Rage would be especially useful for PvP - I don't think it will be. Deathwish/Flurry/Mortal Strike is almost certainly going to be the burst damage mangler build. However the upper Arms talents are nice in particular for PvE. Endless Rage can be used both for tanking and doing bursts of DPS, and also has some reasonable utility in PvP as well.

In my experience, Slam's greatest problem is rage since you can't auto-attack while slamming. With infinite rage, slam really becomes viable even though it usually isn't. I tried a 2-handed slam build, and I never had problems with placement, I had problems getting the max rage to unload a bunch of slams at the right time. The only reason I mention slam is because it's probably the best way to spend rage in that situation. A tank could also use it to spam alternating heroic strike and sunder armor.

The way things look, I think it will pan out this way for arms:

PvP Mangler: 31 Points Arms to Mortal Strike, 30 Points in Fury to Flurry/Deathwish. This build will have mortal strike, deathwish, improved intercept, flurry, enrage, and weapon specialization, impale and deep wounds. It will be ridiculious.

Arms Raid DPS: 41 Points to Endless Rage, 5 to Cruelty, 5 Tactical Mastery, 5 Toughness, 5 Defiance. Can replace any amount of defiance with shield block stuff too, or last stand. This build can swap from DPS to off-tanking, and uses the blood frenzy debuff to provide a general increase in raid DPS.

What I wonder is with Mortal Strike and Flurry being compatible, will dual-wield DPS still remain viable? Fury seems to be weak, but I suspect that might be deceptive, as there are a ridiculious number of attack power raising abilities that work in synergy with each other there. Improved Battleshout, Improved Berserker Stance, and Rampage will probably increase attack power by hundreds of points of points, not to mention the gradual increase in attack power as levels increase. It might be worth some mathy experimentation.

I think the big chunk of 61 points to spend is going to allow people to not just specialize in one thing like warriors traditionally do, but really open the possibility for effective dual-role specs.