Cataclysm: the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees
Today’s new beta build brings us the first glimpse at the ripped-apart-and-rebuilt talent trees, courtesy of mmo-champion.
A summary of the changes to talent trees in Cataclysm:
- Each tree/spec has been reduced to 31 point length. There are more than 31 points in each tree, but the last talent is the “31 point talent”, the one that requires you to spend 30 talents in the tree.
- Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
- When you hit level 10, you will be asked to choose a spec. This will unlock a unique spell/ability and some passive bonuses, and will also lock you out of the other two trees, until level 70. After level 70 you can put points into the other trees.
Blizzard have mentioned that this is a “first pass” for all of the trees, and some clases, including druids, are not as far along in development – so expect changes. The work-in-progress talent tree is here if you want to play around. In the meantime though, here’s a quick idea of how things like for now:
Balance: Starsurge + pushback reduction on balance spells
Feral: Mangle + ? + Vengeance (damage taken in bear converts to AP)
Resto: Swiftmend + pushback reduction on healing spells + Meditation
Balance: Starfall
Feral: Berserk
Resto: Tree of Life (duh!)
There’s nothing *new* in the tree (since the official preview) – the new talents are the same that they had already announced. So no new toys.
However, they’ve removed the “+X% spellpower” type filler talents, meaning that our trees are now all “meat” and no cheap fillers.
Nature’s Focus (pushback protection) is stitched in. Subtlety is gone. Good riddance, you point-leeches.
I believe we will be getting a talent point every second level or something like that – so at first glance, it seems like we’re getting all our talents super early – but I think they’ll be stretched out. Even so, great talents like Imp Rejuv, Living Seed, Nature’s Bounty – they’ve all been moved further up, which is nice. Strangely, Empowered Touch is quite far down – I would have thought we’d be given that earlier, for dungeon-ing.
The really nice toys are at the bottom – Efflorescence, Swiftmend, Emp Touch, Emp Rejuv, Wild Growth, and of course, Tree of Life.
In the balance tree, I’m sad to realise that Solar Beam is now out of reach for standard X-0-31 builds. Bum. I kinda liked that idea. Looks like Genesis and Moonglow are it.. still not sure what’s happening with Nature’s Grace. With only 10 points to spend, we can’t get any further down into the balance goodies.
- Imp Tranquility
- Imp Barkskin
- Subtlety
- Naturalist (will the cast time of HT be reduced?)
- Omen of Clarity (to be trained)
- Improved Tree of Life (will the cooldown be reduced?)
- Master Shapeshifter (why bother with Natural Shapeshifter at all?)
- Gift of the Earthmother (boo, I was looking forward to the T8-style heal)
- Nature’s Splendor (from the balance tree) – will our HoTs be short now?
Don’t stress, the trees aren’t broken, they’re just REALLY preliminary. Look at the resto tree – Master Shapeshifter is gone (since it was a flat buff to output), leaving only Natural Shapeshifter – but what do we trees care about saving a few hundred mana every 5 minutes? That means we have to waste 3 points to get to the next tier.
Bears, too, are forced to waste points in cat talents just to progress.
The balance and resto trees are both showing their Level 10 freebies as talents, so I’m not sure what the story is there. Update: Blizz have said they’re considering giving balance druids Moonkin at 10; Swiftmend is probably just a mistake, since the trees are so early in development.
I think what we have here is all of the talents that Blizzard wanted to keep, but thrown together in a hurry to release. I wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed it out ASAP in order to distract people away from the Real ID drama. So what we have is a super preliminary glance at what the trees MIGHT look like – but until they reshuffle, it’s hard to know what our specs will turn out to be. The scrapped talents might come back, the talents may be shuffled around, etc. We really know very little, so far.
My concern at the moment isn’t really the talents, but what is happening with TOL. So far, it’s a pretty mediocre ability – 45s on a 5min cooldown, to get a 15% buff, throw instant Regrowths (okay), double Lifeblooms (but we can only have them on a single person at a time, so that’s pretty crappy), 2 more WG targets, and we’re not sure about the rest. I’m not really sold at this point, because it’s basically a 15% healing buff with some weak bonuses sewn in. I want to know, at the very least, if they are going to let us shift in and out (to get to safety) without losing the rest of the buff.
I guess the only thing about the talents that worry me (at this early stage) is the fact that it looks like you can max out your tree easily, and there’s really no room for individuality or thoughtful decisions. I think the 31 point trees look to be moving us towards being even more “cookie cutter”, which is odd, because Blizzard made statements that they wanted our choices to be more meaningful. I wonder if anything will change in that respect.
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Hmm.
There’s no Moonkin in the balance tree. Does that mean it’s also free at level 10?
If so, part of me thinks “wow, pretty cool for people who want to level balance” but the other half, the resto half, feels REALLY ripped off
Keeva´s last blog ..Cataclysm- the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees 
Hmm, Imp ToL is gone. While I didn’t care for the damage side of it, I wonder about the cooldown reduction. Has this been scrapped? Will these things be stitched in somehow?
I am still hoping they reconsider the snare effect, or at the very least, let us shift in and out to get to safety and then pick up the remainder of the 45 second buff.
The druid trees are still in development, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Keeva´s last blog ..Cataclysm- the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees
Sorry for the self-commenting, I keep noticing stuff.
Predatory Strikes in the first tier? THAT IS HOT. For non-ferals, that’s the “use a finisher, get a free instant heal” ability. It is invaluable while soloing, I love it to death.
Mangle and Predatory Strikes as a lowbie… I can’t wait for my troll!!!
Keeva´s last blog ..Cataclysm- the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees
I knew we’d get swiftmend as first spell on 10.. can’t load Mmo-champ atm :s
Moonra´s last blog ..Being a Healer- the Good and the Bad-
Quoting someone on the druid forums:
“Resto only has 2 points in their first tier. They don’t shapeshift but once every 5 minutes (if needed) and furor does nothing for them. They can’t even get to their tier 2 talents. GG blizz.”
I didn’t even notice! No more Master Shapeshifter providing a +healing buff means that Natural Shapeshifter is almost entirely pointless, which means that we have to waste points three points – completely waste them – just to move down the tree.
So at the moment – the trees are BLATANTLY waiting to be fixed up.. we’ll just have to wait and see what they do.
Keeva´s last blog ..Cataclysm- the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees
Bears can’t get to their second tier without wasting points either.
Very, very preliminary stuff lol
Keeva´s last blog ..Cataclysm- the brand spankin’ new 31pt talent trees
“but if you respec at 80 you’ll lose Swiftmend, you only get it back if you then spec at least 20 in the resto tree again”
Blue posts “31 points must be spent in the primary specialization tree before any points can be placed in additional trees.”
If we get swiftmend at level 10 by putting 1 point in the resto tree that one point will force us to put another 30 points in the resto tree before even thinking about the other 2 trees so healers will get swiftmend no matter what. The fact that its showing up as a talent point further down the new beta calculators shows the calculators and the blue posts aren’t on the same page so to speak. So basically we are totally clueless to what things will actually look like in Cataclysm
When I levelled balance I put 2 points in the resto tree for improved mark of the wild, not sure if it was worth it but it was nice to have a choice in hybrid builds while levelling at least.
Yep, they’re a big mess, and it’s likely unintended that they are sitting there.
I hope they fix us up soon, it’s frustrating to know the direction the talent trees are going in, but knowing ours are wrong.
I finally got a website with the trees that my browser can handle and voila, after 15secs I regret putting time into it.
I didn’t even bother checking feral or balance… will wait for a couple of Beta updates before I take a decent look
I liked the huge tree’s we had before better, these 31point thingies don’t give us much room to play with different talents…
Moonra´s last blog ..Being a Healer- the Good and the Bad-
Urgh… WTB more develop time from blizz on those tree…
These trees most be considered more than preliminary. It’s just a sketch, and sort of a joke to put them out there. I’m not going to dwell to much on the reasoning to put SO unfinnished tres out to public eyes, that is now done.
But as things are looking.. Where is the diversety for restos? where are my talents?
the talents I am really sad to see go is:
Gift of the Earthmother- That just looked really cool as a talent in the first beta trees.
Natures splendor- I like long hots, gives me more time to do other stuff
Naturalist- Since HT was going to be out long, big expensive heal, is haste the only way to make it faster? sigh, I guess it will be natures swiftness+HT for another half expansion.
I am also sad to see the passive we had before go. Specificly the hot’s heal more on wounded targets. That was just a good mechanic, but I guess is was a little OP.
don’t get me started on ToL….
Had a quick look for my other char, a prot warrior, same thing.. The only place I could find where there were a bit to play around with was after I had spent 31 points in prot and could move to other trees.. sigh…
More info and more development please!
small thing I’d like to add
-Wild Growth-
(usual blabla) but then…
(while in ToL) Wild Growth hits 2 additional targets
guess we know one thing that ToL will do
Moonra´s last blog ..Being a Healer- the Good and the Bad-
My only worry is that they are working on such an important aspect of the game so late in the Cataclysm development. I have a bad feeling that a lot of the classes will be totally broken at release. I really hope that the beta testers really pay attention and give great feedback.
The talents for druids are clearly raw at the moment. I’d look at these as no more than hints for now.
In one Paladin thread GC starts out with “These are old talents. This is not the paladin revamp that we said was coming. Sorry, you’ll just have to wait a little bit longer.” Then he follows that with “Druids aren’t as far along as paladins, so I’m sure we’ll hear now how they are always last. :)” In other words, druids have a long way to go yet.
Also, I saw a comment to the effect that they’re still deciding whether the level 10 Balance skill will be Moonkin form or Starsurge. I think I’d prefer Starsurge, which makes Moonkin form feel like a real boost when you get to 31 points. Both would be pretty useful for leveling, though.
Based on the rate that things are going, I’d guess it’s going to be a few weeks yet before there’s a lot of work on Druids. And even then I think Feral may have more challenges than Balance/Resto. So I’m setting my alarm clock for August — no point in working myself into an Owlkin frenzy for a good while yet.
Has Blizz said what will happen with dual-spec’s?
I mean, you could easily pop your big CD’s then switch to balance spec until the CD’s come back…
“There’s no Moonkin in the balance tree. Does that mean it’s also free at level 10? ”
As someoe who still hasn’t made peace with the tree changes I was cursing when I didn’t see moonkin form in the tree thinking they had axed it .. then I saw the owlkin frenzy thing I don’t think I have ever used and figured it meant moonkin would be trainable.
I look at some of the things they want to do and feel like shouting
YOU CANT DO THAT NOOB!!!