Official expansion talent previews

[vor_lord]

New updates posted today (October 4th). Lot of changes to priest talent trees is what I've seen so far.

[Concillian]

Changes listed here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...=31013618&sid=1

They sure made the priest trees a LOT more interesting. Especially holy.


Priest


* Shades of Darkness ability replaced with Shadowfiend.
* Focused Mind replaces Improved Shadow Weaving and has been reduced to three ranks reducing mana cost of affected spells by 5/10/15%.
* Shadow Power has been moved to Focused Mind’s previous position.
* Misery has been moved to the Shadow tree, replacing Shadow Power.
* New talent Enlightenment replaces Misery in the Discipline tree.
* Improved Shadow Weaving has been removed.
* New talent Vampiric Touch replaces Shadow Mend.
* Misery now affects Vampiric Touch instead of Holy Fire.
* Focused Power now affects Feared targets instead of Dazed targets.
* Improved Renew tooltip updated.
* Inspiration tooltip updated.
* Holy Reach tooltip updated.
* Spirit of Redemption now provides a Spirit increase and the duration has been increased.
* Surge of Light has swapped positions with Blessed Resilience and has been reduced to two ranks providing 25/50%.
* Lightwell has been reduced to a 6 minute cooldown and the effect duration has been decreased to 6 seconds.
* New talent Holy Concentration in the Holy tree.
* New talent Circle of Healing replaces Circle of Renewal.


Paladin


* Divine Purpose ranks changed to 3/6/9/12/15%.


Warlock


* New talent Backlash in the Destruction tree.
* Shadowfury now has a 30 yd. range and has had its cooldown has been reduced to 1 minute.
* Unstable Affliction now has a 1.5 second cast time.


Warriors


* Spell Reflection now has a 10 second cooldown.

[Lissa]

Warlock
* New talent Backlash in the Destruction tree.
* Shadowfury now has a 30 yd. range and has had its cooldown has been reduced to 1 minute.
* Unstable Affliction now has a 1.5 second cast time.

Missed by the person originally doing the list is that Soul Leech has been changed as well. It is now 20% damage returned as health, was previously 10% damage returned as health.

[oldmandennis]

I liked the shadow heal spell better then the new drain. The shadow heal spell seemed like it made it possible for somebody who went all out in shadow to keep a group of rogues up during AOE heavy fights, even in shadow form. The new talent seems like it would be hard to build a group around in a 40 man raid. It would be ideal for warlocks, but how often will you have 5 warlocks around (one for the tank)? Any other class is likely to be missing out on one part or the other of the shadow priests power.

[vor_lord]

The new talent seems like it would be hard to build a group around in a 40 man raid.

25 man raid or 10 man raids in BC remember. Shadow mend was so badly inefficient that it seemed like its use would be only 'Oh crap' in a raid. PvP it would have been nice, but I think Vampiric Touch has some nice possibilities. Moving Misery into the Shadow Tree is a nice thing for raiding shadow priests.

[WimpySmurf]

Warriors
* Spell Reflection now has a 10 second cooldown.

They also changed Anticipation to be 4 defense per point instead of 2.

Improved Rend is now +75% bleed damage for 3/3.

Looks like they migh have changed Improved Thunderclap too.
It's now dmg/slow/rage of 40%/4%/1, 70%,7%,2, and 100%/10%/4.

[Kevin]

They also changed Anticipation to be 4 defense per point instead of 2.

Improved Rend is now +75% bleed damage for 3/3.

Looks like they migh have changed Improved Thunderclap too.
It's now dmg/slow/rage of 40%/4%/1, 70%,7%,2, and 100%/10%/4.

That does make anticipation a little more interesting, though I still expect that you'll see single pieces of armor with that much def on them still. It does mean a constant 0.8% dodge, 0.8% parry, and 0.8% block. So 5% for 1.6% physical damage avoidance, a bit less chance to get crit, some more block %. It's approaching the returns you get for something like deflection. It's more valuable when in a resist set that saps a lot of the physical mitigation from the gear sets. Nice change, though I'm not sure that it will be taken over tactical mastery for most builds.

I keep wondering what kind of damage a build with imp heroic strike + Focused rage (9 rage heroic strikes) + piercing howl could do for damage since HS does more damge to a dazed target. Though it would be nice if booming voice affected piercing howl as well, keeping that up would be 1 2/3 rage / s. Though I guess a 9 second spammable snare would be pretty powerful. I just want to know how much extra damage HS gets on a dazed target. Might not need piercing howl with shield bash doing a daze too and that should be dropped to 7 rage thanks to focused rage.

I guess I really want more info on on just how much of an increase some of the new synergies do. :)