Cataclysm talent update, armor specialisation
Courtesy of mmo-champion, here are the latest changes to the druid talent trees. I imagine they are long from being finished yet, so as always, take with a grain of salt and don’t assume they will look exactly like this at release.
The talent calculator is here.
Balance
* Starsurge is now a baseline spell.
* Owlkin Frenzy is now a Tier 4 talent. Down from Tier 5.
* Lunar Guidance is now a Tier 3 talent. Down from Tier 4.
* Planetary Alignment is gone.
* Balance of Power is now a Tier 2 talent. Down from Tier 3.
* Lunar Justice is gone.
* Moonkin Form is now a Tier 3 talent.
* Typhoon is now a Tier 3 talent.
* Earth and Moon – Your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 100% chance to apply the Earth and Moon effect, which increases spell damage taken by 2/5% for 12 sec. Also increases your spell damage by 2/4%.
* Nature’s Majesty – Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish and Healing Touch spells by 2/4%.
Feral
* Primal Fury has an additional effect – your critical strikes from Cat Form abilities that add combo points have a 50/100% chance to add an additional combo point.
* Ferocity is gone.
* Heart of the Wild is back as a Tier 1 talent.
Restoration
* Wild Growth is now a Tier 5 talent. Down from Tier 6.
* Swiftmend is now a primary skill.
* Empowered Touch is now a Tier 4 talent. Down from Tier 5.
* Natural Perfection is now a Tier 6 talent. Up from Tier 5.
* Fury of Stormrage is now a Tier 5 talent. Up from Tier 4.
* Master Shapeshifter – Grants an effect which lasts while the Druid is within the respective shapeshift form. Bear Form – Increases physical damage by 2%. Cat Form – Increases critical strike chance by 2%. Moonkin Form – Increases spell damage by 2%. Tree of Life/Caster Form – Increases healing by 2%. /
Moonkin is back in the balance tree, so I thought that would make Starsurge the level 10 talent (they were deciding between Moonkin and Starsurge, earlier), but it’s listed here as baseline. I think this might be a misunderstanding of the word baseline (when I read baseline, I think that it’s available for all druids – but I think here it means baseline for Balance, at 10).
Nice to see the first tiers fixed up a bit, but I’m not happy having to dump 3 points into Natural Shapeshifter, an ability that I will use so rarely – that’s pretty crappy. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it stays like that. It’s required to get down to Master Shapeshifter, so we have to take it for a healing boost, but I don’t like investing 3 talents into something that is near worthless (even more than before).
Welcome back Gift of the Earthmother, glad you made the cut. Still mourning Imp Barkskin, come back to us!
Nom Nom Nom no longer has a “NNF” tag – is the name going to stick?
Hmm, no more Naturalist, did it get the bump? Will HT’s cast time be changed at all?
So far, fairly underwhelming, there still really aren’t many “choices” to make, unless you take a couple of points out of healing talents to put into Fury of Stormrage etc. I’m hoping that the trees are still really, really preliminary. I won’t be worrying too much until we see more information.
The new armor specialisation bonuses:
* Cloth Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Cloth.
* Leather Specialization – Increases Agi by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Wild Leather Specialization – Increases Stam in Bear Form by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Wild Leather Specialization – Increases Agi in Cat Form by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Mail Specialization – Increases Agi by 5% while wearing only Mail.
* Tribal Mail Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Mail.
* Plate Specialization – Increases Str by 5% while wearing only Plate.
* Defender’s Plate Specialization – Increases Stam by 5% while wearing only Plate.
* Blessed Plate Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Plate.
* Astral Leather Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Elemental Mail Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Mail.
* Furious Plate Specialization – Increases Str by 5% while wearing only Plate.
I assume the bolded line above is for us. So, wear only leather armor (cloak excluded, of course) and you’ll get a free 5% intellect. Put on some cloth boots that might normally be BIS, and you’ll lose that freebie 5% intellect. This is to encourage people to gravitate towards their class-appropriate armor, but not lock you out of upgrades entirely.
So if a cloth item drops and it’s a big upgrade, you can still use it, but you’ll need to weigh up the loss of mana/regen/crit etc. Edit: forgot that in Cataclysm, Intellect also grants Spellpower, so unless it’s a *very* big upgrade, 5% int will probably win out, meaning you’ll usually be hurting yourself taking cloth.
Personally I don’t know why they don’t just give us each one type of armor, lock us out of the other types, and fix the available loot so that we don’t covet another class’ gear all the time. I’d *like* to only wear leather, and I don’t think we need incentive programs or punishments for deviating – get rid of the problem at its root and restrict us to one type each. Then there won’t be any crying over pallies taking cloth, or everything being hunter armor, or whether it’s fair for balance druids to compete for BIS cloth pieces. Restrict us to one class, but make sure there are fair amounts of drops (with desirable stats) for everyone.
My two cents!
Possibly Related Posts:
- Super quickie: Cata glyphs observations
- So, what’s going on?
- A little bit of history repeating itself
12 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Keep in mind that intellect will provide spellpower so that 5% extra might add a lot of !Powa! to our spells (unless i’m wrong and they changed it?)
Moonra´s last blog ..Halion Down!
you are in fact right. Int will convert to SP, so it is actually not only a 5% increase in mana, but also in power, whcich, to be honest, is quite significant in my eyes.
The trees still look unfinnished.. I really would like to see furor go to the feral tree, and see the natures splendor return together with naturalist, just to give som choises in regards to hot’s and direct healing abillities.
Mm, I keep forgetting the new Int->Sp thing.
Bonuses are nice, but the problem is that if you do have to break it for some reason, then you feel like you’re “doing it wrong” until you can fix it. And everyone else will see that you’re doing it wrong as well.
I just wish they would just confine us all to a specific armor class, so we don’t have to jump through hoops to “do the right thing” and wear the type that we’re “meant to”.
I really hope there’s enough “extra” points in the resto tree. Fury of Stormrage looks sooooo cool for a bored tree in heroics!
Jen´s last blog ..My take on the RealID Blizzard fail
Here’s hoping some big changes happen before cataclysm. Imp barkskin was seen by some as a PVP only talent and by other as usful in PVE for certain encounters, maybe these niche talents will be lost as a consequence of fewer points to spend over all. Less points = less variety, choice and debate? When I look at the new cata talent trees all I see is Imp. Rejuv, Imp Rejuv, Imp Rejuv, Wild growth, tree of life, then a feeling of being shortchaged because i just ran out of points to spend lol
The disadvantage of locking everyone to a single armor type is that it totally neuters any non-combat gear set you might have. Want your shaman to get in a tuxedo? Not unless the cumberbund is made from chainmail and Wildheart Feathers.
It would be easy enough to make it so that novelty items like that don’t have a class, particularly those without any stats or function.
But there’s so many lovely cloth robes! <3 (with stats, but only worn for the pretty.)
Jen´s last blog ..My take on the RealID Blizzard fail
That’s something I loved about Morrowind; it didn’t matter what kind of armor you had, you could always wear a pretty robe over it.
But Blizzard want people to be recognisable, so I doubt they would ever do that.
They need to make Furor help out the resto druids. It helps everyone but restoration druids yet it is in the resto tree. That makes little sense. Give us the caster form bonus that boomkins get and resto druids will take it.
Test
Test again!