Quoth GC:
Ancestral Swiftness was not removed. Sorry for any confusion. It is still in the second tier of Enhancement, available to all.
Arse. Sure, it's available to all... and it's mandatory for all, as well. Here's hoping they finally get rid of this irritating talent. I want to be able to subspec into resto as ele, or ele as resto, rather than being absolutely forced to dump points into enhancement so that GW is useful.
Thursday 22 July 2010
Wednesday 21 July 2010
Medley of Things
Cataclysm Talents
With the latest patch we've seen two iterations of the 31-point talent trees (the latest is here, as of publishing). Thus far, resto shaman look to be in a decent place. After picking up every talent that seems 'mandatory' plus Telluric Currents (because it looks amazing), I'm left with four points to spread around between Concussion/Convection for better ROI on Telluric Currents, Elemental Weapons for the rather dull spellpower boost, finishing Nature's Blessing for better tank healing, or a few other peripheral talents in the resto tree such as cheaper totems or the bizarre shocks-interact-with-heals-now talent.
I'm guessing that at the start of the expansion, I'll pick up Elemental Weapons and max out Nature's Blessing. Further in, and depending how much tank healing I end up doing, I can easily see moving those points around. Pulling Ancestral Swiftness (and presumably making Ghost Wolf instant cast baseline at long last, oh frabulous day!) and rejigging the low-tier elemental and enhancement talents has opened up the options considerably.
I still think the trees need to be a little fatter, mind. There were very few choices that weren't painfully obvious to me when investing the initial 31 points, the only real debate being whether 3/3 Nature's Blessing beats 1/3 NB + 2/2 T. Currents. It'd be nice to be in more situations where I want utility talent X and utility talent Y, but only have sufficient points to get one before unlocking even better talents deeper in the tree.
For my PvP shaman the situation is better. I don't have anything like enough talent points to grab everything, and there are some fairly tricky decisions. I think I want Elemental Warding, which means I can also grab up to two points in the hit and spirit-to-hit-rating talent. Being hitcapped for PvP without actually wearing any hit would be nice, depending how much spirit I end up with.
Healer DPS - Telluric Currents
This seems likely to be a choice dictated by play-style and content, but certainly when levelling it's a no-brainer to get mana-positive lightning bolts. I'll be pushing for this to work as a huge improvement to my quality of life while healing, although some healers have entirely valid points about not picking a healing spec in order to do sub-par DPS. That the resto shaman tree admits both viewpoints within the 31 point requirement, and for me at least the trade-off is acceptable, is a great start. It gives me hope that Archangel/Evangelism, Fury of Stormrage and whatever madness they come up with for paladins will also be both fun and optional. Really can't stress the latter enough; the amount of rage sloshing around in the hearts of some healers at being 'forced' to deal damage is considerable. It has to be a choice in order for this to feel like anything other than a punishment for those players.
Whoa, Enough About Resto Shaman Already
Fine, fine. My other characters and specs are a mixed bunch.
Elemental shaman still have to spend points in 'more mana' or 'more mana' on the first tier. Currently, this is somewhat a risible idea as elemental has no issue with mana in any sensible situation. In Cataclysm, DPS are expected to not run OoM despite having no spirit-based regen, so I'm of the opinion that infinite mana will still obtain. Not sure what can be done about this, but I'd rather have some options here - a talent to make fire-Bob less stupid would be nice.
Enhancement shaman appear to be doing fine. There's not a huge array of choice, and much like Elemental they have to spend some points in saving mana before getting to some tasty things on the second tier of their default subspec tree.
Mages saw very few changes apart from a lot of spells randomly altered in respect to level learned. There are some annoying aspects to their talent trees - Torment the Weak still exists, Frostbite still exists, fire still lacks tools for small-scale PvP, and so on. Combustion is really awkward, and I'm not sure how much I like the fact that Fire is now all about managing DoTs. Arcane as it exists on live is incredibly dull, and I don't like the proposed mastery for 'em. I hate pet management, so frost isn't that attractive, and I will outright hate it if I have to actually babysit my squirtle-Bob. All told, I'm just not convinced my mages will be as much fun after the expansion and that makes me a little sad. Still plenty of time for this to change, though.
Druids in their present state confuse me. Resto cannot even get past tier two without flinging some points into taking less spell damage or the literally useless Furor. Whilst I don't mind taking less damage, it'd be nice to have a choice between a couple of utility talents there. There's more choice later in the tree, and I was able to pick up the DPS talent at a fairly small cost elsewhere. Building a tanking spec was a bit more fun. Balance is a foreign land to me, a place of strange customs and glyphs that reduce spell pushback. Wut?
(Prot) Warriors have a talent called Blood and Thunder, for which they shall receive my eternal adoration. I quite like Rend, and I hope this will be worth the investment and live up to the name.
Priests and rogues - eh, I don't know enough to comment usefully. I hope they get the Smite stuff sorted for priests.
A Word on Paladins
I don't yet have a paladin, but they're undergoing a fairly massive overhaul and I wanted to whiffle about my misguided healer brethren (They wear plate! Pfft. Mail is where it's at). The addition of Holy Power came out of nowhere as far as I can tell. Loads of spells and abilities have been added or changed, and the talent trees went 'wibble' with such magnitude that nations trembled. All bets are off, essentially. The resident guild uber-paladin is somewhat depressed by the state of the class so far, which given Blizzard's track record is perhaps a reasonable stance. My concern for my future holy cow is largely in the new healing tools being added - Healing Hands is interesting, but rather encourages standing in the melee camp. All other things being equal, ranged tend to spread out - either due to fight mechanics or an inherent respect for personal space - and would be hard to cover with this spell. Light of Dawn is a conic AoE heal, the first of its kind. Having dealt with cone AoE as a DPS and tank, err, they're fiddly and really annoying at times. I wouldn't - don't - want to heal with one. Ever. If they insist on going ahead with this, I hope they at least address the issue of visual feedback. The VFX used for cone spells so far tends strongly towards being attached to the character, such that any movement gives a completely false impression of where the damage/healing actually went.
I hate to use the phrase, but so far paladin healing looks a tad... gimmicky. I'd be the last person to praise the current state of paladin healing, but it is at least solid and dependable. Gargantuan throughput on two targets (unt only two targets!), forever. The new AoE spells are strongly dependant on the position of the paladin, and running around constantly to get decent coverage for Healing Hands and Light of Dawn (mostly exclusive, as one wants to be in the middle of a pack whilst the other wants to be some distance away) does not sound very fun. At least there are more options for healing on the hoof, and Speed of Light provides a nice little mini-sprint tied to Healing Hands. Ideal for getting out of the fire whilst healing everyone who was stood in it like numpties. Bacon is back being a general-purpose appropriation of healing, but has had its throughput cut by half.
So far and with much hand-waving, it looks like paladins will be standing in melee range healing one tank and providing off-heals on a second via bacon. When the raid takes damage, Hands and Dawn will stabilise/top off the melee. If bacon also redirects all the healing done by AoE spells, these could also provide fairly massive spike heals or HoT effects. Holy Power provided by shocks and the odd heal on the bacon target will be used for free throughput with Word of Glory, exact proportion depending on how chunky the heal is and how tight mana gets. Shocks will see a bit more use, as they provide Holy Power and haste on the healbombs, but until numbers emerge who knows if this will be worth the GCD on cooldown or only as a last-ditch resort while moving.
A raid-healing paladin is doing almost exactly the same thing, but I guess making more use of shocks and flashes. If the ranged can be persuaded to cluster up a bit, some running around with Healing Hands and cone heals may also be standard.
I don't know, but neither of these seem compelling so far. Additional uses for Holy Power remain to be seen. But hey, no matter what - paladins will have more heals! It's a start.
With the latest patch we've seen two iterations of the 31-point talent trees (the latest is here, as of publishing). Thus far, resto shaman look to be in a decent place. After picking up every talent that seems 'mandatory' plus Telluric Currents (because it looks amazing), I'm left with four points to spread around between Concussion/Convection for better ROI on Telluric Currents, Elemental Weapons for the rather dull spellpower boost, finishing Nature's Blessing for better tank healing, or a few other peripheral talents in the resto tree such as cheaper totems or the bizarre shocks-interact-with-heals-now talent.
I'm guessing that at the start of the expansion, I'll pick up Elemental Weapons and max out Nature's Blessing. Further in, and depending how much tank healing I end up doing, I can easily see moving those points around. Pulling Ancestral Swiftness (and presumably making Ghost Wolf instant cast baseline at long last, oh frabulous day!) and rejigging the low-tier elemental and enhancement talents has opened up the options considerably.
I still think the trees need to be a little fatter, mind. There were very few choices that weren't painfully obvious to me when investing the initial 31 points, the only real debate being whether 3/3 Nature's Blessing beats 1/3 NB + 2/2 T. Currents. It'd be nice to be in more situations where I want utility talent X and utility talent Y, but only have sufficient points to get one before unlocking even better talents deeper in the tree.
For my PvP shaman the situation is better. I don't have anything like enough talent points to grab everything, and there are some fairly tricky decisions. I think I want Elemental Warding, which means I can also grab up to two points in the hit and spirit-to-hit-rating talent. Being hitcapped for PvP without actually wearing any hit would be nice, depending how much spirit I end up with.
Healer DPS - Telluric Currents
This seems likely to be a choice dictated by play-style and content, but certainly when levelling it's a no-brainer to get mana-positive lightning bolts. I'll be pushing for this to work as a huge improvement to my quality of life while healing, although some healers have entirely valid points about not picking a healing spec in order to do sub-par DPS. That the resto shaman tree admits both viewpoints within the 31 point requirement, and for me at least the trade-off is acceptable, is a great start. It gives me hope that Archangel/Evangelism, Fury of Stormrage and whatever madness they come up with for paladins will also be both fun and optional. Really can't stress the latter enough; the amount of rage sloshing around in the hearts of some healers at being 'forced' to deal damage is considerable. It has to be a choice in order for this to feel like anything other than a punishment for those players.
Whoa, Enough About Resto Shaman Already
Fine, fine. My other characters and specs are a mixed bunch.
Elemental shaman still have to spend points in 'more mana' or 'more mana' on the first tier. Currently, this is somewhat a risible idea as elemental has no issue with mana in any sensible situation. In Cataclysm, DPS are expected to not run OoM despite having no spirit-based regen, so I'm of the opinion that infinite mana will still obtain. Not sure what can be done about this, but I'd rather have some options here - a talent to make fire-Bob less stupid would be nice.
Enhancement shaman appear to be doing fine. There's not a huge array of choice, and much like Elemental they have to spend some points in saving mana before getting to some tasty things on the second tier of their default subspec tree.
Mages saw very few changes apart from a lot of spells randomly altered in respect to level learned. There are some annoying aspects to their talent trees - Torment the Weak still exists, Frostbite still exists, fire still lacks tools for small-scale PvP, and so on. Combustion is really awkward, and I'm not sure how much I like the fact that Fire is now all about managing DoTs. Arcane as it exists on live is incredibly dull, and I don't like the proposed mastery for 'em. I hate pet management, so frost isn't that attractive, and I will outright hate it if I have to actually babysit my squirtle-Bob. All told, I'm just not convinced my mages will be as much fun after the expansion and that makes me a little sad. Still plenty of time for this to change, though.
Druids in their present state confuse me. Resto cannot even get past tier two without flinging some points into taking less spell damage or the literally useless Furor. Whilst I don't mind taking less damage, it'd be nice to have a choice between a couple of utility talents there. There's more choice later in the tree, and I was able to pick up the DPS talent at a fairly small cost elsewhere. Building a tanking spec was a bit more fun. Balance is a foreign land to me, a place of strange customs and glyphs that reduce spell pushback. Wut?
(Prot) Warriors have a talent called Blood and Thunder, for which they shall receive my eternal adoration. I quite like Rend, and I hope this will be worth the investment and live up to the name.
Priests and rogues - eh, I don't know enough to comment usefully. I hope they get the Smite stuff sorted for priests.
A Word on Paladins
I don't yet have a paladin, but they're undergoing a fairly massive overhaul and I wanted to whiffle about my misguided healer brethren (They wear plate! Pfft. Mail is where it's at). The addition of Holy Power came out of nowhere as far as I can tell. Loads of spells and abilities have been added or changed, and the talent trees went 'wibble' with such magnitude that nations trembled. All bets are off, essentially. The resident guild uber-paladin is somewhat depressed by the state of the class so far, which given Blizzard's track record is perhaps a reasonable stance. My concern for my future holy cow is largely in the new healing tools being added - Healing Hands is interesting, but rather encourages standing in the melee camp. All other things being equal, ranged tend to spread out - either due to fight mechanics or an inherent respect for personal space - and would be hard to cover with this spell. Light of Dawn is a conic AoE heal, the first of its kind. Having dealt with cone AoE as a DPS and tank, err, they're fiddly and really annoying at times. I wouldn't - don't - want to heal with one. Ever. If they insist on going ahead with this, I hope they at least address the issue of visual feedback. The VFX used for cone spells so far tends strongly towards being attached to the character, such that any movement gives a completely false impression of where the damage/healing actually went.
I hate to use the phrase, but so far paladin healing looks a tad... gimmicky. I'd be the last person to praise the current state of paladin healing, but it is at least solid and dependable. Gargantuan throughput on two targets (unt only two targets!), forever. The new AoE spells are strongly dependant on the position of the paladin, and running around constantly to get decent coverage for Healing Hands and Light of Dawn (mostly exclusive, as one wants to be in the middle of a pack whilst the other wants to be some distance away) does not sound very fun. At least there are more options for healing on the hoof, and Speed of Light provides a nice little mini-sprint tied to Healing Hands. Ideal for getting out of the fire whilst healing everyone who was stood in it like numpties. Bacon is back being a general-purpose appropriation of healing, but has had its throughput cut by half.
So far and with much hand-waving, it looks like paladins will be standing in melee range healing one tank and providing off-heals on a second via bacon. When the raid takes damage, Hands and Dawn will stabilise/top off the melee. If bacon also redirects all the healing done by AoE spells, these could also provide fairly massive spike heals or HoT effects. Holy Power provided by shocks and the odd heal on the bacon target will be used for free throughput with Word of Glory, exact proportion depending on how chunky the heal is and how tight mana gets. Shocks will see a bit more use, as they provide Holy Power and haste on the healbombs, but until numbers emerge who knows if this will be worth the GCD on cooldown or only as a last-ditch resort while moving.
A raid-healing paladin is doing almost exactly the same thing, but I guess making more use of shocks and flashes. If the ranged can be persuaded to cluster up a bit, some running around with Healing Hands and cone heals may also be standard.
I don't know, but neither of these seem compelling so far. Additional uses for Holy Power remain to be seen. But hey, no matter what - paladins will have more heals! It's a start.
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