Retribution “A righteous crusader who judges and punishes opponents with weapons and Holy magic.”

First, before we talk about anything else, please note that we are not going to get Divine Storm as our active ability for picking the tree. They are likely going to create a new single-target ability specifically for this purpose.

Divine Storm will end up back in the talent tree, but not as the defining talent in the tree. It’s going somewhere in the middle, and they’re adding yet another ability as the 31-pointer — to what end, we currently don’t know. They’ve also hinted that they’re going to be making a third new ability for use someplace else. So, we’re getting three new abilities, and we only have a vague idea what one of them will be called (Divine Retribution … another dartboard pally skill name).

Otherwise, some things are pretty close to how we remember them, but others have changed drastically. Eye for an Eye can proc off all damage, and instead of reflecting it back, it hits the target with a Judgement. Speaking of Judgement, there is no more Judgement of Wisdom. There is no more Judgement of Justice. There is only Judgement, which is a combination of Light’s healing and Justice’s no-flee bonus.

There is no Seal of Command anymore. There is essentially a talent called Seals of Retribution (third tier) that lets you duplicate it using Seal of Righteousness. So, your choice of seals are pretty much going to be Righteousness and Vengeance/Corruption for damage. You still have Seals of Light, Wisdom and Justice at the moment for utility.

As far as interesting talents go, my votes go for revamped Eye for an Eye and Sanctified Wrath. EfaE now has a chance to proc off any damage (including raid damage) and hits the source with a free Judgement. Sanctified Wrath lets you treat any target as if it’s below 20% for Hammer of Wrath when you’ve got Avenging Wrath up, plus it adds crit to Hammer of Wrath.

• Spec Active Ability
  • Divine Storm Instant cast. 10 sec cooldown. Requires Melee Weapon. An instant weapon attack that causes 55% of weapon damage to up to all enemies within 8 yards. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totaling 25% of the damage caused.
• Spec Passives
  • Two-Handed Weapon Specialization Requires Two-Handed Axes, Two-Handed Maces, Polearms, Two-Handed Swords. Increases the damage you deal with two-handed melee weapons by 6%.
  • Sheath of Light Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 30% of your attack power and your critical healing spells heal the target for 60% of the healed amount over 12 seconds.
  • Divine Purpose Generate ???% of your maximum mana every ??? sec.
• Tier 1 talents
  • Improved Judgements (2) Decreases the cooldown of your Judgement spells by 1/2 sec.
  • Heart of the Crusader (3) In addition to the normal effect, your Judgement spells will also increase the critical strike chance of all attacks made against that target by an additional 1/2/3%.
  • Crusade (3) Increases the damage and healing of your Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, and Holy Shocke by 5/10/15% and an additional 5/10/15% against enemy Humanoids, Demons, Undead, Dragonkin, and Elementals.
• Tier 2 talents
  • Eye for an Eye (2) All damaging attacks against you have a 5/10% chance to cause you to strike your attacker with your Judgement ability. This effect cannot occur more than once every 2 secs.
  • Righteous Vengeance (3) When your Judgement, Crusader Strike, Hammer of the Righteous, and Divine Storm spells deal a critical strike, your target will take 10/20/30% additional damage over 8 sec.
  • Pursuit of Justice (2) Increases movement and mounted movement speed by 8/15%. This does not stack with other movement speed increasing effects.
• Tier 3 talents
  • Judgments of the Wise (3) Your damaging Judgement spells have a 33/66/100% chance to grant the Replenishment effect to up to 10 party or raid members mana regeneration equal to 1% of their maximum mana per 5 sec for 15 sec, and to immediately grant you 25% of your base mana.
  • The Art of War (2) Your critical melee attacks reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light or Exorcism spell by 50/100%.
  • Seals of Retribution (1) Your damaging Seals now also deal 15% weapon damage each time you swing, and your Seal of Righteousness now hits up to 2 additional targets.
• Tier 4 talents
  • Swift Retribution (3) Your auras also increase your party and raid’s melee and ranged attack speed by 7/14/20%.
  • Fanaticism (3) Increases the critical strike chance of your Judgement spell by 6/12/18% and reduces threat caused by all actions by 10/20/30% except when under the effects of Righteous Fury.
• Tier 5 talents
  • Repentance (1) Instant cast. 1 min cooldown. Puts the enemy target in a state of meditation, incapacitating them for up to 1 min, and removing the effect of Righteous Vengeance. Any damage caused will awaken the target. Usable against Demons, Dragonkin, Giants, Humanoids, and Undead.
  • Sanctified Retribution (3) Increases the damage caused by Retribution Aura by 17/34/50% and all damage caused by friendly targets affected by any of your Auras is increased by 1/2/3%.
  • Sanctified Wrath (2) Increases the critical strike chance of Hammer of Wrath by 25/50%, reduces the cooldown of Avenging Wrath by 30/60 secs and while affected by Avenging Wrath you can use Hammer of Wrath as if the target had 20% or less health.
• Tier 6 talents
  • Conviction (3) Gives you a 1/2/3% bonus to Physical and Holy damage you deal for 30 sec after dealing a critical strike from a weapon swing, spell, or ability. This effect stacks up to 3 times.
  • Sanctity of Battle (2) Increases the damage caused by Exorcism by 10/20% and reduces the cooldown by 2/4 secs
• Tier 7 talents
  • Divine Retribution (1) Not Yet Implemented.

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Protection “Uses Holy magic to shield himself / herself and defend allies from attackers.”

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. The paladin, in general, is still heavily under development, and don’t expect the next patch’s protection tree to look at all like this. Also, ignore the Holy Shield in this build, as it is going to stop being a constant, maintained ability and instead will be something you hit when you need it, much like trinkets.

They chose Avenger’s Shield as the active ability you nab for choosing protection spec. It gives you damage and allows you to pull in dungeons more easily at low levels. Touched by the Light as a passive allows early conversion of the strength-based plate gear we’ll be wearing into the spellpower we need.

Some quick things of note before we dig into things. Ardent Defender is no longer passive. It is an active Last Stand-esque ability. Some things have been moved from other trees into protection, like Improved Crusader Strike and Seals of the Pure. We get Improved Exorcism to remove the cast time off the spell so that we can actually use the ability for something other than pulls.

Divine Guardian now reduces the cooldown of Divine Plea by up to 60 seconds, which means we can use it whenever we need it (as it appears we’ve lost the almost constant uptime we were able to manage before). Hallowed Ground is a peculiar talent, as it allows you to extend your Consecration by up to 30 additional seconds. This is a really nice thing for flag guarding in PvP battlegrounds like Arathi Basin, as we will be able to keep the area constantly consecrated without worrying nearly as much about mana consumption.

Overall, don’t get too attached or upset about anything here, as we’ve essentially been told that most of this is going to change in the next build or two.

• Spec Active Ability
  • Avenger’s Shield Hurls a holy shield at the enemy, dealing [440+0.07*SPH+0.07*AP] to [536+0.07*SPH+0.07*AP] Holy damage, Dazing them and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. Lasts 10 sec.
• Spec Passives
  • Touched by the Light Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 60% of your Strength and increases the amount healed by your critical heals by 30%.
  • Vengeance Each time you take damage, you gain 5% of the damage taken as attack power, up to a maximum of 10% of your health.
• Tier 1 talents
  • Toughness (3) Increases your armor value from items by 3/6/10%
  • Seals of the Pure (3) Increases the damage done by your Seals and their Judgement effects by 5/10/15%
  • Improved Hammer of Justice (2) Decreases the cooldown of your Hammer of Justice spell by 10/20 sec.
• Tier 2 talents
  • Judgements of the Just (2) Increases the duration of your Seal of Justice effect by 0.5/1.0 sec and your Judgement spells also reduce the melee attack speed of the target by 10%
  • Sanctuary (3) Reduces damage taken from all sources by 1/2/3% and when you block, parry, or dodge a melee attack you will gain 1/2/3% of maximum mana
  • Guardian’s Favor (2) Reduces the cooldown of your Hand of Protection by 60 sec/2 min and increases the duration of your Hand of Freedom by 2/4 sec.
  • Sacred Oath (3) Increases the damage you cause while using a one-handed weapon by 4/8/12% and increases the amount absorbed by your Sacred Shield by 10/20/30%
• Tier 3 talents
  • Spiritual Attunement (2) A passive ability that gives the Paladin mana when healed by other friendly targets’ spells. The amount of mana gained is equal to 5/10% of the amount healed.
  • Divine Sacrifice (1) Instant. 2 min cooldown. 30% of all damage taken by party members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin (up to a maximum of 40% of the Paladin’s health times the number of party members). Damage which reduces the Paladin below 20% health will break the effect. Lasts 10 sec.
  • Improved Exorcism (2) Reduces the cast time of your Exocism spell by 0.75/1.5 secs and increases the damage by 10/20%
  • Improved Devotion Aura (3) Increases the armor bonus of your Devotion Aura by 17/34/50% and increases the amount healed on any target affected by any of your Auras by 6%.
• Tier 4 talents
  • Hallowed Ground (2) Increases the duration of your Consecration spell by 15/30 secs and the damage it causes by 10/20%.
  • Vindication (2) Gives the Paladin’s damaging attacks a chance to reduce physical damage done by the target by 5/10% for 10 sec.
  • Shield of the Templar (2) Your Avenger’s Shield has a 50/100% chance to silence your targets for 3 sec.
• Tier 5 talents
  • Ardent Defender (1) Instant. 2 min cooldown. Activate to reduce damage taken by 20%. While active, attacks which would otherwise kill you cause you to be healed for 15% of your maximum health. Only useable when your health is below 35%.
  • Divine Guardian (2) Reduces the cooldown of your Divine Sacrifice and Divine Plea abilities by 30/60secs.
  • Holy Shield (3) Instant cast. 8 sec cooldown. Reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 2/4/6%, and deals 97.8/195.6/293.41 Holy damage for each attack blocked.
• Tier 6 talents
  • Sacred Duty (3) Increases your total Stamina by 5/10/15%, reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield and Divine Protection spells by 1/2/3 min.
  • Improved Crusader Strike (2) Reduces the cooldown of Crusader Strike by 2/4 secs and increases the damage caused by 50/100%
• Tier 7 talents
  • Hammer of the Righteous (1) Instant cast. Hammer the current target and up to 2 additional nearby targets, causing 3 times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage.

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Holy “Invokes the power of the Light to protect and to heal.”

This is not the holy revamp that you’re looking for. Ghostcrawler (WoW lead systems designer) said that what we’re seeing isn’t what they’re wanting for holy paladins yet. It will likely be a beta build or two before something vaguely final for our class is ready as we’re one of the classes lagging towards the back of the pack.

One thing I’m annoyed with (but I believe they’re going to fix in an upcoming patch) is that our spell pushback resistance is talented, when just about every other caster appears to be getting it as one of their passive bonuses for picking the tree. Expect some sort of change regarding this in the future.

There are still a couple things to glean from these changes, though. First off, Holy Shock has returned to a healadin-only ability. Blizzard felt that it was important to start giving us the tools we needed to heal earlier on as well as giving us something that can double as a damage ability. Secondly, Beacon of Light (at least for this brief moment) has been tossed higher into the tree so that you can nab it at sometime around level 30.

Also, notice a couple other strange talent interactions, like Purifying Power (sixth tier), which can give you free Judgements when cleansing effects, and Inspired Judgement (third tier), which heals your beacon target when your Judgement hits. So imagine a cleanse-heavy fight. Every time you cleanse, you judge the boss, which heals your beacon target. These talents may not make it to expansion, let alone the next beta build, but they do give us some idea of things that the developers are thinking of.

• Spec Active Ability
  • Holy Shock Instant cast. 6 sec cooldown. Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 314 to 340 Holy damage to an enemy, or 481 to 519 healing to an ally.
• Spec Passives
  • Meditation Allows ???% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting.
  • Healing Bonus Increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by ???%.
• Tier 1 talents
  • Sanctified Light (3) Increases the critical effect chance of your Judgements and Holy Shock spells by 5/10/15%.
  • Spiritual Focus (2) Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Flash of Light, Holy Light, and Divine Light by 35/70%.
  • Divinity (3) Increases all healing done by you and all healing effects on you by 2/4/6%.
• Tier 2 talents
  • Healing Light (3) Increases the amount healed by your Holy Light, Flash of Light, Divine Light, and the effectiveness of Holy Shock spells by 4/8/12%.
  • Improved Lay on Hands (2) Grants the target of your Lay on Hands spell 10/20% reduced physical damage taken for 15 sec. In addition, the cooldown for your Lay on Hands spell is reduced by 2/4 min.
  • Judgements of the Pure (3) Your Judgement spell increases your casting and melee haste by 3/6/9% for 1 min.
  • Unyielding Faith (2) When you are affected by a Fear or Disorient effect your next spell cast within 15 sec has its cast time reduced by 50/100%.
• Tier 3 talents
  • Illumination (3) After getting a critical effect from your abilities you gain mana equal to 10/20/30% of the base cost of the spell.
  • Divine Light (1) 2.5 sec cast. Heals a friendly target for 7761.99 to 8648.14.
  • Beacon of Light (1) Instant cast. The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all members of your party or raid within a 60 yard radius. Each Holy Light or Holy Shock you cast on party or raid members will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed. Only one target can be the Beacon of Light at a time. Last 1 min.
  • Inspired Judgement (2) Your Judgement spell also heals your Beacon of Light for 50/100% of the damage caused.
• Tier 4 talents
  • Infusion of Light (2) Your Holy Shock critical heits reduce the cast time of your next Flash of Light by 0.75/1.5 sec or increase the critical chance of your next Holy Light or Divine Light by 10/20%.
  • Blessed Life (2) All attacks against you have a 5/10% chance to cause half damage.
  • Enlightened Judgements (2) Increases the range of your Judgement spell by 15/30 yards and grants you hit rating equal to 50/100% of any spirit gained from items or effects.
• Tier 5 talents
  • Improved Concentration Aura (3) Increases the effect of your Concentration Aura by an additional 5/10/15% and while any Aura is active reduces the duration of any Silence or Interrupt effects used against an affected group member by 10/20/30%. The duration reduction does not stack with any other effects.
  • Aura Mastery (1) Instant. 2 min cooldown. Causes your Concentration Aura to make all affected targets immune to Silence and Interrupt effects and improve the effect of all other auras by 100%. Lasts 6 sec.
  • Sacred Cleansing (1) Your Cleans spell now also dispels 1 Magic effect.
• Tier 6 talents
  • Purifying Power (2) When you Cleans a harmful effect, you have a 50/100% chance to strike the caster of the harmful effect with your Judgement ability.
  • Selfless Healer (3) Your healing spells have a 2/4/6% chance to critically hit when cast on others.
• Tier 7 talents
  • Divine Illumination (1) Instant. 3 min cooldown. Increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and attack by 30%.

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A couple of brief disclaimers.

1. This is the first pass at these new talent trees. They are quite unfinished and will change significantly throughout the beta cycle.
2. Mages (and especially the arcane tree) are particularly unfinished. Some classes have a more accurate look at their new trees and specializations; mages do not.
3. Do not panic, burn Ghostcrawler dolls in effigy, take up pitchforks and/or torches, or send anything potentially volatile to any class developers. Nothing you see here or elsewhere on the interwebs is even remotely close to being final. Relax.

Specializations

These are the primary skills you learn at level 10, when you select your talent tree.

So basically, at level 10 you still select your first talent, but in doing so, you also choose your primary talent tree and will be unable to put any talent points anywhere else for the next 60 levels. In addition, when you select your tree, you will be given a few abilities that immediately give you access to some of the awesome things associated with that tree. The plan is to make you instantly feel like a fire mage, if a fire mage is what you’d prefer to feel like. Here’s how the specialization bonuses look after this first pass:

Arcane

• Arcane Barrage
• Arcane Specialization (+arcane damage)

Fire

• Pyroblast
• Molten Armor
• Fire Specialization (+fire damage)

Frost

• Summon Water Elemental
• Frost Specialization (+frost damage)

So that sounds pretty awesome.

Arcane mages get one of the coolest arcane spells, previously the arcane tree cap talent, at level 10. I just want you to spend a moment thinking about how awesome it would have been to level an arcane mage with an instant nuke on a three-second cooldown, as opposed to now, where leveling an arcane mage feels like something child molesters spend eternity doing in the deepest pit of hell. I’d like to see Arcane Blast given out bit earlier, because the arcane playstyle is so dependent upon the mechanics of that spell, but Arcane Barrage is great too.

Fire mages begin with two signature fire abilities: Pyroblast and Molten Armor. This immediately gives a fire mage a distinct flavor. Massive fire balls and flimsy, damaging armor? Not shabby for a first try, Blizzard. Also, not having to spend a talent point on an ability that so many later fire talents depend upon is a welcome change. Still, I have to wonder if this means arcane mages and frost mages can’t learn Molten Armor? If that’s the case, why aren’t arcane and frost learning their armor spells as well? Will those spells already have been made available to them prior to level 10? I shudder to imagine those first 10 levels without Frost Armor …

Frost is officially a pet class. We’ll learn to summon our water elementals at level 10 and never be alone again. Except when we get jumped by 16 murlocs and leave our big blue buddy behind to die in our place while we run, screaming, for a safe place to change our soiled skirts. The beta tooltip for this still lists a 45-second expiration on the elemental, so I have to wonder if the pet will still require a glyph slot to make permanent. I would hope not. I’d like to see that glyph excised completely from the game. If water elementals are now going to be an essential part of the frost mage leveling experience, I’m not sure it makes any sense at all for them to be of limited duration.

All three trees get passive increased damage to spells from their school of magic, which is logical. I’d like to see frost and arcane both get one more ability at 10, possibly their armor spells (or maybe a more powerful, exclusive version of those spells, if they’re going to be available to all mages). I feel, though, that Blizzard is on the right track with these specialty bonuses. They immediately give a strong sense of uniqueness — a very distinct flavor — to the mage who chooses them at level 10 and should make the early leveling process far more pleasant.

31-Point talent trees

So much is left unfinished about these trees, it’s quite difficult to view them as anything other than a very preliminary preview of what’s to come. Still, there’s a treasure trove of speculative information to be gleaned here. Go take a look. Browse. Peruse. Then come back, and we’ll talk a bit.

Here’s what I’m seeing at first glance:

• We’re down to between 19 and 20 distinct talents per tree. Arcane has 20; the other two have 19.
• There are 40-41 talent points total per tree. Again, arcane has the most, at 41, while the other two trees clock in at 40 each. That means that should you choose to do so, you could very well get every talent in your chosen tree (since you’ll have 41 talent points to spend at level 85), though it looks to me as if doing that would be a very bad idea.
• All talents require between one and three talent points to max out.
• Many low-tier talents have become high-tier talents and vice versa. For example, Focus Magic is now very deep in the arcane tree, while Torment the Weak has become a first-tier talent. This dramatically alters the landscape of what you will be diving into the other trees for, after reaching that level 70 threshold.
• A great number of the more passive or boring talents have been removed entirely (Student of the Mind, we hardly knew ye), with which I have zero issues.
• While we have significantly fewer talents to deal with, many of them are simply amalgamations of older talents, stripped to their basic components and then smooshed back together into one uber-talent monstrosity. See Ice Shards. I can’t find a good link for it as it exists in the current beta build, so check the talent trees again; the same applies for most of the talents you’ll see mentioned below.

Other interesting things of note, organized by tree:

Arcane

• Arcane Repulsion now only works when you have Mage Armor up, making Mage Armor your PvP armor of choice if you’re an arcane mage (and maybe even if you aren’t).
• Netherwind Presence is a first-tier talent? Holy crap. Unless fire mages and frost mages both hate haste for some reason in the expansion, why wouldn’t every mage ever want to pick this talent up?
• Improved Arcane Missiles gives two extra missiles? Sweet fancy Moses. I just peed a little.
• Improved Polymorph, while still being awesome, is now completely different. Instead of being able to queue up damage for three seconds on a polymorphed target, you now stun them for three seconds when you do damage to them. Please, please don’t let diminishing returns affect this stun. Anyway, so much for my little haiku. The whole of that lost column is now officially obsolete. Oh well, at least I got to type “snuffleupagus.”
• Arcane’s cap talent is now Arcane Power. Hmm.

Fire

• Improved Fire Blast now basically gives Fire Blast the same essential functionality as Arcane Barrage, only with a slightly longer cooldown and no travel time. Glad to see Fire Blast back in the game as a viable spell.
• Both Master of Elements and Incineration look like potential secondary tree destinations for my talent points.
• Molten Shields looks like a colossal waste of talent points, a rarity in these new trees.
• Pyromaniac is massively altered, making it almost mandatory that fire mages be attacking multiple targets in fights where doing so is possible.
• The new Combustion deserves its own column, really. I’m dying for more beta data (ha!) on this, so any of you who have wisdom to dispense, please do so in the comments below.

Frost

• Um. Shatter. Drool. For just about everybody, this is going to give you a more than 100% chance at a crit against frozen targets. We’re going to need some theorycrafting once everything solidifies to determine the exact point at which frost mages don’t need any more crit, ever.
• Ice Shards is now Improved Blizzard, so don’t worry, guys. AoE Blizzard farming is still on the table.
• Frostfire Orb! Whoo! Frostfire Bolt isn’t going to be totally useless!
• See also: Brain Freeze. I’m very interested to see if a viable Frostfire spec emerges, despite the hybrid spec limitations inherent in the new talent system.

So … a lot to take in. I’m still absorbing things, and can’t wait until the next beta build throws me for yet another massive loop.

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As promised, Blizzard has completed a massive overhaul of the talent system in the Cataclysm beta. It’s a change of biblical proportions: only 31 points to the bottom of the trees, no more Mortal Shots, no more Hawk Eye, Explosive Shot for free at level 10, dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!

A lot of what we’re seeing right now looks a little bit crude. We have vastly different numbers of talents in different trees as well as some truly odd choices of what talents remain and which ones were removed. Suffice it to say (as we always say), this is just the beta; this is a first implementation of the new talent system, and expect many changes moving forward.

Talent specialization benefits

At level 10 when you get your first talent point, you’ll be asked to specialize in one tree. Thereafter, you can only put talent points into your specialization tree until you get to the very bottom of the tree (which you’ll reach at level 70). However, once you choose your tree, you’ll get a free, super-awesome ability right there at level 10. In concept, this should be something that will really give you the feel of your tree and will scale with your level appropriately.

• All Trees Bonus hit chance (3% at lvl 80) and pushback reduction (70% at level 80)
• Beast Mastery Intimidation
• Marksman Aimed Shot
• Survival Explosive Shot

The most interesting effect of this is that Aimed Shot will now be exclusive to the MM spec. No other tree will have access to this shot any longer. However, Aimed Shot is not really a part of the MM rotation; at best, it’s used as an opener until we reach the Master Marksman talent deep in the tree and have a chance to proc free instant Aimed Shots every now and then. Only SV gets a shot that is actually the defining shot of the tree.

Implementation is somewhat hit and miss

While I was very excited about this idea — giving spec-defining abilities to hunters at level 10 — I’m a bit disappointed in the current implementation.

The reason I was so excited about this change is I felt that it would be a very good tool for teaching new hunters who are just leveling about their tree and class. Currently, the leveling system does not do a very good job of teaching hunters how to play their spec. Take a look at what your rotation is at level 80. The cornerstones of those rotations for MM and SV are not available until very high levels, so throughout the learning process the hunter is not given the most important tools they’ll need when they reach the end game. They’re not being taught how to play their spec; they’re being taught something else, some half-formed rotations that they’ll have to unlearn when they get to the end game.

Don’t get me wrong: We’re making big improvements on the hunter education already in Cataclysm. Pets are there from level 1. Steady Shot is there at level 3, which is a massive improvement. But what about the defining shots?

Blizzard has already identified the signature abilities of each spec in Cataclysm: Explosive Shot for SV, Chimera Shot for MM and Kill Command for BM. Let’s try to focus on those! Let’s take a look at the blueprint for each hunter spec at level 85 and then see how the leveling process trains them to do well at that.

For SV, Explosive Shot is spot on the money. We’re there. Get them used to this shot for a while, then around level 30, they can buy their way into Lock & Load, then T.N.T. at 40. Now they’re really getting used to the cornerstone of the SV rotation. SV is an example of fantastic implementation of the new system.

But Aimed Shot for MM? The MM Cataclysm rotation is all about refreshing Serpent Sting with Chimera Shot. With the shorter duration of Serpent Sting and the need to have focus set aside for the second Chimera Shot becomes available, this is a skill that we need teach upcoming MM hunters. As it is now this defining ability, their signature shot, will not be available to them until level 70.

BM is a tough call, I’ll admit that, since the signature ability isn’t specific to the BM tree. BM’s Cataclysm rotation, as we discussed, is going to be all about converting Frenzy stacks into haste via Focus Fire and Kill Command. All of these abilities are (again) available fairly high up in the tree, so the leveling BM hunter will get to them on his own soon enough. Intimidation is certainly a good leveling talent for soloing, but I think every BM hunter would agree that Bestial Wrath feels more like a defining ability of the BM hunter. Let them get their big red pet on! Let them show off their pet out of the gate. However, this is really a matter of cool factor and not a matter of improving the intuitive learning experience, as it is with MM.

The talents

You can see the new hunter talent trees over at MMO-Champion.

Blizzard shared a couple of design goals with us regarding the talent system overhaul. The designers want to simplify the talent trees, to remove the boring talents that no one ever takes and also to remove many of the passive and must-have talents. They also wanted talents to be cooler and more desirable in general, so you aren’t getting a new talent point and putting it in another 1% increase to crit, for example. Of course, we also have the earlier stated goal of giving some more choice in talents — so there isn’t necessarily a cookie-cutter build for each spec down to the very last talent point.

I think the perfect world implementation would provoke a mental conversation like this:

Hmm … this talent is really cool!

Oh, but so is this one. I can see that being awesome in this situation I often find myself in.

Whoa! But look at that one — that is awesomesauce! I must have it too!

Oh god, I can only get one of them! They’re all so good … I want them all. I can’t decide between the shiny hunter goodness! Damn you, Ghostcrawler!

In a perfect implementation, you have more totally awesome talents that you want than you have talent points, and the advantage of those talents can’t be boiled down into a mathematical formula to give you the right answer for every situation. This means that the talents would inherently have to be somewhat situational. A perfect example is the current Hawk Eye talent. The extra range is sweet, but no one takes it because there are mathematically superior DPS options. But what if our choice was between Hawk Eye and a talent that boosted our stamina? Now both are useful in different ways, but you can’t mathematically prove which is best. In fact, the best choice probably depends on your individual play style — a perfect situation.

Unfortunately, I think the first draft of the hunter talent trees provoked a mental conversation more like this one:

Eh, they left that one in?

Blah, I suppose that maybe, sometime, that talent could possibly useful.

Whatever, I’ll just toss the points wherever so I can get down to something that I might actually care about.

I’m particularly surprised to see talents like Dazzled Prey still in there, as that certainly must qualify as one of those talents that no one ever took. Furthermore, our Hawk Eye range extension talent was removed — if I have to take a talent that isn’t a flat DPS advantage, that is a fantastic one. I’m also saddened that we don’t see a stamina boost options anymore — with mana mattering for our healers, that could be a legitimate choice for a non-DPS talent.

But again, this is just the very first implementation of the new talent system, and we can hope that these improve.

Did our DPS go down due to this change?

This question is a tough one to answer because of the mastery system. Previous to this beta patch, the mastery system was in effect. As far as I can tell despite constantly getting booted with “World Server Down” notices, the mastery system is not in effect now. So in addition to the talent changes, we’re also looking at all that mastery goodness having temporarily gone away.

In target dummy tests, hunter DPS is vastly lower than it was before the change. Every shot is doing less damage, and the loss of the Mortal Shots talent makes our crit damage plummet. No longer will Aimed Shot one-shot everything in its path. I went from Aimed Shot crits averaging 24k on the dummy before the patch to averaging 16k now (level 80).

However, despite the loss of well over 1,000 DPS on the target dummy, a level 80 hunter in the same endgame Wrath gear is still doing more DPS in the Cataclysm beta than in Wrath. Our DPS is still going up, even without mastery implemented.

As a final note, I should point out that the namesake of this column you’re reading, Scatter Shot, is no longer a talent. Is is now a base ability trainable by all hunters.

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Specializations

First, let’s take a look at the new class specializations:

• Blood gets Veteran of the Third War, Death Rune Mastery, Heart Strike and Vengeance.
• Frost gets Frost Strike, Icy Talons and Blood of the North.
• Unholy gets Impurity, Master of Ghouls, Scourge Strike and Reaping.

You notice immediately that each tree gets its signature strike and its death rune conversion talent. I have a feeling that if we keep anything from this iteration of the talent trees, it’s probably going to be those. Death knight talent differentiation has long revolved around the replacement of strikes in the base rotation and the use of death runes to maximize usage of those strikes. It hasn’t always worked out that way, of course; sometimes the death rune conversion talent hasn’t been worth picking up, and sometimes Obliterate has overshadowed Scourge Strike. But now that the skill’s free, Scourge Strike’s balanced and a new rune system is being developed to allow us more freedom in our rotations, it looks like we’ve seen the last of those days.

The other skills still seem solid enough to establish the differences between the trees. Unholy’s last real signature ability, the perma-ghoul, certainly makes sense as a base skill. Given that unholy is generally a physical tree these days, the presence of Impurity may seem a little strange, though. Otherwise, blood gets a few solid survivability talents to jump start its tankability, and frost gets Icy Talons, which certainly has made a name for itself in the tree. Interestingly enough, Blizzard hasn’t corralled dual wielding into one tree as with warrior fury, but then again, it seems likely one will still need frost’s talents to be tops at it, anyway. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dual Wield and Nerves of Cold Steel as specializations in a future iteration of the trees.

The blood tree

Overall, blood’s quirks and issues remain much the same as they did. The tree starts out with the choice of Bladed Armor, hung nice and low, likely to entice DPSers to get into blood as a secondary tree. Of course, most tanks will probably take a couple points of that and round off the first tier with Blade Barrier, now only three points. The last first tier talent, Butchery, will probably just hang out and not get much use, unless we find ourselves runic power starved enough to be desperate with the new system. Depending on how frost measures up, we may see some unholy death knights taking it to get at Blood-Caked Blade on the second tier.

Also accompanying Blood-Caked Blade there will be Scent of Blood. Tanks may actually want Scent of Blood with the new rune system, which may leave us with enough downtime between rune refreshes to fill up with Rune Strikes. Also mandatory on this tier will be Scarlet Fever, the physical damage absorbing debuff. It won’t act as a third disease, in case you were wondering, but it will still definitely provide more threat and less incoming damage.

On the third tier, Bone Shield and Abomination’s Might are now definitely out of reach of unholy and frost, so no luck for DPSers who’re nostalgic for those old skills. Tanks will probably be picking up both, along with Sanguine Fortitude, which will make Icebound Fortitude stronger and free to cast at max level. At the fourth tier, Toughness is a no-brainer to pick up, although Blood Parasites may or may not be, depending on how well they stand up to AoE damage and how much they heal for when exploded.

At the fifth tier, Rune Tap‘s stronger than ever, having folded the benefits of Improved Rune Tap into itself. Improved Blood Presence, while mandatory, still feels like it could use some extra goodies for tanks who take it (at this point, you could just make crit immunity a specialization perk anyway), but Vampiric Blood and Will of the Necropolis are still solid.

Improved Death Strike will definitely be a pro buy at sixth tier. Crimson Scourge is a little more iffy, depending on how much AoE tanking you see yourself doing. After all, you have three-target Heart Strike and Scarlet Fever to serve you well enough, especially since Morbidity is relative easy to reach in the unholy tree. So essentially, you’ll probably want to choose to grab either Morbidity or Crimson Scourge. Finally, Dancing Rune Weapon tops it off.

Overall, Blood still has the same issues and strengths we’ve discussed before. However, right now it doesn’t look half bad. It has a good selection of cooldowns. I can see a lot of death knights going with an unholy secondary. While the first-tier talents are sadly somewhat lackluster (although a bit of spell hit never hurt anyone), it might be worth it to gain Morbidity. That said, it will be tough to pass up Improved Icy Touch and Runic Empowerment in frost. What would definitely be optimal is if Morbidity and Epidemic switched places in the unholy tree. With diseases lasting 30 seconds baseline, Epidemic likely won’t be close to mandatory anyway, and blood tanks could split their extra points between frost and unholy, passing up Crimson Scourge and Blood-Caked Blade in the blood tree to afford it all.

The frost tree

The frost tree is still being set up to accept either dual wielders or two-handed weapon wielders, which may be one of the reasons it doesn’t receive dual wield as a sole specialization. The first tier contains at least one possibly drool-worthy skill in Runic Empowerment. With the new system being designed to give us more GCDs, being able to conjure up a fresh rune to fill them with could prove invaluable. Improved Icy Touch will likely prove valuable to frost DPSers, while Icy Reach stands out for PvPers.

The second tier is about evenly split between PvP and PvE Utility, although it’s sadly lacking as a tier with much value for unholy or blood death knights looking to spend their extra 10 points. Annihilation is a must-have for frost, but the other trees don’t use Obliterate. Nerves of Cold Steel is a must for any dual-wield death knight, though two-handed weapon wielding PvErs will have to take the relatively less useful Lichborne to move on to the next tier. PvPers will be happy to take it, though, along with Endless Winter, which no longer provides extra strength but still provides a free spell interrupt.

On the third tier, old favorites Merciless Combat, Killing Machine and Chill of the Grave return, ready for use and looking much the same as ever, albeit a bit cheaper to buy in some cases. Brittle Bones will be a must grab on fourth for a double whammy of extra damage given and extra strength, as will the new Pillar of Frost, which provides extra strength and immunity to knockbacks, making it great for PvE and PvP. The classics, Rime and Improved Icy Talons, are here, and will likely be mandatory for a good talent build. At 45 percent proc rate, Rime’s nothing to sneeze at indeed, although I can see that rate getting nerfed.

On the fifth tier, Improved Frost Presence will very likely be worth taking for the extra damage. While it’s possible unholy will remain the dominant PvP spec, if you find yourself this deep as a PvPer, Chilblains is still here for you. Hungering Cold is still here as well, as a prerequisite for Howling Blast. This has some PvE DPSers in an uproar, as they see Hungering Cold as relatively useless, but what could redeem it is if the Frost Fever applied by the blast works at full force on all targets. Remember, Pestilence-spread diseases now only do half damage.

On the sixth tier, we have the dueling weapon types. Threat of Thassarian survives for dual wielders, while wielders of two-handed weapons can pick up Might of the Frozen Wastes. It seems Blizzard’s expecting that we’ll have enough downtime that two-hander DKs will be able to keep pace with dual wielders by throwing out a few extra Frost Strikes using their extra runic power. Testing, of course, will be needed to see if that’s true. (Preliminary reports say DKs wielding two-handers hit monstrously hard anyway, so we’ll how the numbers pan out in future patches). Finally, Howling Blast still holds the top spot and should probably be taken if only to use with Rime procs. Incidentally, it now costs only one frost rune, which leaves the unholy rune free for a Plague Strike or a Death and Decay, which now only costs one unholy rune.

As far as secondary trees go, I’d expect most frost knights to head into blood up into Blood-Caked Blade. Butchery is filler points, but the tree’s DPS skills are probably going to be overall more useful for frost knights, who won’t have much use for Morbidity since they don’t use Death Coil.

The unholy tree

The unholy tree starts out with Vicious Strikes, Virulence, and Epidemic, all of which more or less keep their old functions. However, with diseases lasting 30 seconds on their own, Epidemic seems a bit redundant. That said, there are only three pure DPS points on the second tier, so many may take it simply to unlock the third tier. On the second tier, Unholy Command and Morbidity fulfill their usual functions, while Resilient Infection will be a welcome tool in the PvP death knight toolbox, especially now that Virulence has lost its dispel resistance.

On the third tier, Ravenous Dead and Necrosis remain as they’ve always been. Unholy Frenzy is Hysteria moved to the unholy tree and made to boost haste instead of physical damage. Corrupting Strikes is Outbreak with a slightly more utilitarian name. Either way, you’ll probably just fill up on all of these levels.

On the fourth tier, Unholy Blight and Dirge are the same as ever and certainly worth taking. (I still wish UB were flashier, I won’t lie). Strangely enough, Magic Suppression still holds a place in tree. I would have expected it to have been removed from the class, or sent to blood. Instead, it’s not only remaining as a magic damage absorption talent, but the language on the first level of the talent’s tooltip suggests that you must take it in order to get any runic power back from Anti-Magic Shell at all. That seems like a sad nerf to what was a pretty fun and unique death knight boss survival trick. Whether or not we’ll see death knights actually take the skill would seem to depend primarily on whether the extra runic power gain will translate to more damage overall that Blood-Caked Blade. It may be closer than you’d expect, since we’ll essentially have to “waste” two points in Butchery to get it. Then again, Butchery may pump us up with the runic power we’ll miss from AMS. Either, I’m sort of hoping this talent gets scrapped or changed to be more solidly DPS-friendly.

On the fifth tier, Desecration, Ghoul Frenzy and Anti-Magic Zone have about the same function and power they have on live, but just as they currently have little place in a PvE DPS build, I don’t expect that to change much. You’ll probably primarily grab Improved Unholy Presence from here for the extra move speed and move on, unless Ghoul survivability’s nerfed enough that Frenzy’s heal becomes a good investment of a talent point and a GCD.

The sixth tier provides Ebon Plaguebringer, which still provides the full disease powers it does on live, but without the need to spend points in Crypt Fever first. Sudden Doom‘s been moved here from the blood tree as well, but strangely enough, the free Death Coil is once again no longer auto cast. Presumably, Blizzard believes the need rune rotation system will leave us enough free time to spend the procs. Time and testing will tell if they’re right about that. Gargoyle tops off the tree.

As far as a secondary tree goes for unholy, the struggle here is whether you go full out and grab Blood-Caked Blade from blood, or if you save some points for Runic Empowerment in frost. If we have as many free GCDs as Blizzard seems to want us to have with the new rune system, again, being able to conjure up a new rune will be tempting. It’s also worth noting that Scourge Strike is currently a one-unholy-rune strike. If that remains, it will mean that the unholy rotation will have two extra frost runes. If that pans out, it’s possible that Improved Icy Touch might beat out Blood-Caked Blade for damage. Again, testing will be needful.

The lowdown

Again, death knights have a long way to go until these trees are done. Know for a fact that things will change. Still, we’re getting a general idea of how Blizzard will shrink and rearrange the trees. Here are my thoughts for the next few iterations.

• Get another few good, low-tier talents for frost to make it a desirable secondary tree. I suggest adding some more general damage boosting to Improved Icy Touch, or make Annihilation work on Heart and Blood Strike as well.
• Let Rime be a prerequisite for Howling Blast rather than Hungering Cold, in order to give frost death knights more choice and flexibility in their build.
• Remove or revamp Butchery so it doesn’t feel like wasted points to DPSers going for Blood-Caked Blade. This point may be needless if we turn out to need the extra runic power Butchery provides.
• Swap Morbidity and Epidemic for the sake of the tanks, and replace Dark Command with a talent that provides more DPS rather than somewhat superfluous leveling utility.
• Remove Magic Suppression and Anti-Magic Zone, or send them to blood (maybe in exchange for Abomination’s Might?), or tweak them to make them more useful for DPS purposes — and seriously, can’t Anti-Magic Shell still give RP as baseline? That was a pretty fun death knight mechanic.

To get a good idea of where we’re going, we probably need a few more patches of shuffling and a lot of testing to figure out numbers and how talents interaction, but it’s an interesting first step. I look forward to seeing how things shape up.

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Specializations at level 10 are now implemented in the game. When you reach level 10, before you can put your first talent point in any tree, you first have to select which tree you are going to specialize in. Behind that choice are the all-new, lean and mean 31-point talent trees. When you pick your specialization, you are locked into your chosen tree until 31 points have been spent in your talent tree. After that, the other two trees become available to you to spend your remaining talent points. Don’t think you can cheat the system and hit respec and shuffle points as you want; I tried this last night on the PTR, and you reset the specialization choice as well when you respec, starting you right back at zero.

The new system is not without its benefits, though. By choosing a tree, you gain access to mastery specializations, as well as having some talents now become baseline abilities. The masteries replace some of the baked-in talents that we have been used to taking and instead gives them to us just for choosing to specialize in that tree.

What is missing?

Well, quite a few things have been removed from the talent trees, and much of everything else has been moved around.

Earth Shield has been removed as a talent; subsequently, Improved Earth Shield has also been removed. Instead of choosing restoration as your specialization at level 10, you gain access to this spell. The spell itself already comes with nine charges built into it, making it right on par with where we left it. Gaining access to it at level 10 is a big deal as it will make leveling easier as restoration, and since it was a talent every restoration shaman took, it just made sense to make it a base spell.

Healing Focus is also missing in action from the talent trees. Instead it has been moved to one of the masteries and will increase as you stack the mastery stat.

Purification has also been moved from being a stand-alone talent; it has joined Healing Focus as a mastery. Really it merely renames the mastery they already had in place that formerly increased healing based on the amount of points spent in the restoration tree before moving it to a flat percentage.

Improved Reincarnation is just flat-out gone. That makes a certain amount of sense, as I don’t know too many people who actually utilized that talent. I mean after all, we’re shaman — we should never plan on dying!

Tidal Mastery has been removed as well. This removes 5% crit from our healing, and it does not give it back in any shape or form.

Tidal Force is also gone. While this was a 3-minute cooldown, it was one of the abilities we have had that was used in a regular rotation. It really is nowhere to be found. When I logged in, I checked the trainers, but it really is gone. This was sort of a shotgun for resto shaman, and I can tell you already I miss it when healing in instances.

Focused Mind did not make the cut and has been removed. Not terribly shocked at this one; it was not something you saw regularly taken, even in PvP.

Healing Way has gone the way of the dodo bird here, taken into extinction, nowhere to be found. I expected this to get cut, honestly. With all the other passive bonuses built into the tree, this would have been a bit of overkill. Also take into consideration the fact that a lot of end-game raiding resto shaman will usually be carrying enough haste to push Healing Wave close to a one-second cast time, and it this talent that becomes dangerous to balancing heals in Cataclysm. It also falls in line with the design focus Blizzard has for healing by making it a bit harder. Empowered Healing is also removed, likely for the same reasons Healing Way was taken away.

Quite a bit of trimming there, don’t you think?

What has changed?

Well, just because things stayed in the tree does not mean they were left unaltered. Let us take a look at what made the cut but what has changed.

Spark of Life is a new first-tier talent in the restoration tree. It comes with three ranks and at maximum investment gives us the following:

Spark of Life
Rank 3/3
Increases your healing done by 6% and your healing received by 15%

I’ll be honest; this one has me scratching my head just a little bit. The designers did say they wanted to get rid of talents that give percentages, but here is one that does just that. It gives all of our healing a boost, but at the same time, it increases the healing we receive. At this time it does affect Earth Shield, Healing Stream Totem and all of our other heals. I found it very useful while questing and even in the first instances. It helped keep me up a little bit by buffing my passive healing and made it a little easier to focus on the group by taking a little stress off healing myself. I can also see this talent being useful for heal-tanking, which I still endeavor to make an Olympic sport.

Improved Water Shield now only carries two ranks. The effect remains the same with max ranks, though, so not much change there. I am intrigued to see that Greater Healing Wave is not included on list of triggers for Improved Water Shield. This could be a tooltip error, and I will have to investigate this further.

Tidal Focus is now a tier 1 talent as well and has an increased effect with fewer talent points needing to be spent. It is changing from 5/5 talent points needed for maximum effect to 3/3. It has also gained a 1% improvement, netting us a total of 6% mana reduction in the cost of our healing spells over the 5% we originally received. Not a big change yet, but 1% could wind up counting for quite a bit in the end game.

Ancestral Awakening has undergone just a little bit of a change here. First of all, we can pick it up much sooner than before. This is a good thing, especially early in a restoration shaman’s career as a healer. Now while the effect stays the same, the wording on the talent has changed. Instead of specifying Lesser Healing Wave, Healing Wave and Riptide, it now says “when you critically heal with a single-target direct heal.” While this seems like a minor thing, it may become important later on. It seems that this is a distinction that is being made more and more in the beta, so one has to wonder what they may have planned for it and spells like it.

Restorative Totems has also been tweaked just a bit. The effect is the same, but instead of being a three-point choice, it now only requires two talent points to receive the full effect.

Tidal Waves gets a facelift as well. Currently on the live servers, at maximum rank it has the following effect:

Tidal Waves Rank 5
When you cast Chain Heal or Riptide, you have a 100% chance to lower the cast time of your Healing Wave spell by 30% and increase the critical effect chance of the Lesser Healing Wave spell by 25%, until two such spells have been cast. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 20% of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 10% of your bonus healing effects.

Compare that to what it is on the current beta build:

Tidal Waves Rank 3
When you cast Chain heal or Riptide, you gain the Tidal Waves effect, which reduces your cast time of your Healing Wave and Greater Healing Wave spells by 30% and increases the critical effect chance of your Lesser Healing Wave spell by 12%. 2 charges.

So we have a smaller investment of talent points, coming in at only three, to gain max rank and a slight tweak to the talent’s performance. HW and GHW both gain the 30% reduction in cast time, but the critical effect it grants LHW is less than half of what it was before. If you also notice, there is no longer an additional bonus to the healing effects of the spells when this talent is triggered. This can wind up being a huge deal, as the decrease in critical and the loss of bonus healing will start to add up.

Nature’s Blessing has also transformed a bit. On the live server, it increases healing done by 15% of your intellect. In the current beta build, it increases the effectiveness of your direct heals on Earth Shield targets by 15%. Pretty big change and helps make up for some of the lost spellpower boost, at least when tank healing or single-target healing, as long as they have Earth Shield. This is similar to how Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave affects LHW on Earth Shield targets.

There are also some non-restoration tree changes to look forward too as well.

Elemental Weapons is now a tier 1 talent in the enhancement tree and only requires two talent points to achieve the full effect. This can be easily picked up if desired after spending your 31 points in restoration to unlock the other talent trees.

Ancestral Knowledge was actually buffed. In the prior build, it was only offering and additional 9% maximum mana at maximum rank. In this build it has been upped to 15%. This still only requires a maximum investment of three talent points and remains a tier 1 talent.

Ancestral Swiftness has also been tweaked a little bit. Not only does it increase your basic run speed by 15% but it makes Ghost Wolf instant-cast. It also has been reduced from a three-point talent to a two-point talent. This may be a good pickup for some extra mobility, as now it is usable indoors. I can think of a few fights where I wish I could have popped this for a little extra speed. It also replaces the need for boot enchants that increase movement speed, which have become standard requirements for most end-game raiding, and may open up the slot to more beneficial foot enchants in the future. It will be a judgment call on this one for everyone, though.

Concerns with crit

In the end, the changes aren’t terribly surprising, but the lack of crit is a bit concerning. A lot of our abilities rely on crit to proc, and the current shaman models relies heavily on our passive crit to trigger Improved Water Shield and to help keep mana regeneration up. I plan on testing this to see exactly how these changes affect mana consumption and healer longevity, but at a glance, it seems like it is going to be a bit tougher to keep the mana flowing. It will also depend on how helpful Meditation is in recovering that lost mana regeneration. The level cap has been raised to 83, so we’re one step closer to that elusive level cap of 85, which is where I think the vast majority of these changes will see a shaking out, so to speak. There is still no word on Spirit Link, but I will keep hoping it shows up at some point.

Keep in mind this is still a beta, and all of this information is subject to change.

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The way things stand now, leveling as enhancement doesn’t feel like enhancement until the 30s, when we get Windfury, or 40s, when we currently get Dual Wield. That stretch of 20s and 30s really is rough right now, if you are true to the path of enhancement. But no more! We will be enhancement from the beginning with dual wield plus hit, attack power conversion to spellpower and an off-hand attack!

The talent tree is highly streamlined, but with only 41 talent points to spend, we won’t be painting the trees with points. I don’t see any tough choices in the enhancement tree, and getting down to Feral Spirit should be easy with something like 0/31/0. The last 10 points could look something like 8/33/0, but that remains to be seen.

Ancestral Swiftness

Ancestral Swiftness will be amazing. On the recent Raid Warning shaman roundtable podcast, Rouncer and Juggy — two enhancers who I respect a lot — both emphasized the importance of run speed. We were talking about these things before the revised trees were released; at that time, Improved Ghost Wolf and Ancestral Swiftness were separate talents. They both said they’d max both out, even if it meant sacrificing points in passive damage components. The new combined talent is a perfect example of removing talent tree bloat and making each talent point impactful.

Mana regen

Primal Wisdom will be our big mana-returning talent. With this, we’ll be gulping down goblets of mana squeezed from the pain we inflict on our foes. Drink it up, brothers and sisters, drink it up. Will our cup runneth over?

On a recent enhance simulation using the latest EnhSim, I had 110 procs per minute (PPM) for white damage, with 13.44% melee haste from gems and gear, before raid buffs. With a 40% chance to proc, that would give me 44 PPM of Primal Wisdom. Since I’m not in the beta *coughBlizzardinvitemepleasecough*, I’ll just use my current mana levels to finish the calculation. I’m at 5,976 base mana, 5% of which is 299, which means at 44 PPM I’ll have 13,156 mana return per minute. With no intellect on melee gear, we can expect our mana levels to stay around baseline; thus at those levels, we should be able to refill our mana pools 2.2 times per minute with continuous attacks.

Comparing Wrath to beta is not the ideal way to sim this stuff out, but with Primal Wisdom, Mental Quickness reducing the cost of instant-cast spells and Shamanistic Rage still in full force, our little blue bars should stay full.

Rotation

Our rotation hasn’t been simplified yet, though. From all I can, tell we’ll still be cooldown-starved at all times. Don’t get me wrong, I love that about enhancement; it’s one of my favorite things. Even in those rare moments when absolutely everything that could be on cooldown is on cooldown, even then I have something to do: refresh Lightning Shield or Magma Totem.

It looks like we’ll drop from our rotation:

• Magma Totem replaced with Searing Totem
• Fire Nova does not work with Searing Totem

And adding to the selection of spells for enhancement:

• Searing Totem, as noted above
• Maelstrom Weapon Lava Bursts
• Unleash Elements
• Spirit Walker’s Grace to use on the move

By my math, X – 2 + 4 = more than what we have now. Obviously we’re months away from release, so we’ll see what comes of it.

One talent that has piqued my curiosity is Elemental Precision. The spirit portion of this talent is a waste for us, but would the extra hit for fire, frost and nature spells boost our damage more than Call of Flame? It’s too early to tell, and no doubt we’ll have many revisions between now and then.

PvP

Lastly, I’ll speculate a bit about enhancement in PvP, though I am admittedly not much of a PvPer these days. As I’m experimenting with builds, I wonder if Searing Flames and Improved Lava Lash will be worth taking at the sacrifice of some defensive abilities. Also, how many points should we put in Totemic Vigor? Will one point be enough to prevent drive-by totem killing, or will be need a full two points? An enhancement PvP spec could look something like 7/34/0.

Also, did you notice Frozen Power is gone? No more snare? Sure, we’ll get an additional slow from Unleashed Weapon: Frostbrand, but we lose the damage buff and root effect. Plus Frostbrand is still not included in Elemental Weapons. This needs more development; I will surely miss the loss of the snare effect.

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First off, the overall tree bonuses, abilities and the description: The elemental shaman is a spellcaster who harnesses the destructive forces of nature and the elements. A fairly apt, if short description. For abilities, we get two passive abilities in addition to Thunderstorm. Eye of the Storm combines the old Lightning Mastery bonus of 0.5 seconds off the cast time for Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Lava Burst with the normal 70% pushback resistance. We also get the 100% crit damage bonus of Elemental Fury by default.

Talents

Making an unexpected appearance at the top of the tree is an unchanged Elemental Devastation, obviously there for the Enhancement shaman to get as part of their sub-spec. Convection drops to two points for a 5/10% mana cost reduction, while Concussion gets an extra percentage point of damage, going up to 6% at three points rather than the old 5%. It’s a fairly easy choice to make here, 3/3 Concussion, 2/2 Convection.

The second tier is comprised of Improved Fire Nova, Elemental Warding, Elemental Precision and Call of Flame. The first two haven’t changed at all, and Call of Flame goes to a 10/20% bonus for fire totems (and fire nova) with a 5/10% bonus to Lava Burst. As expected, Elemental Precision has its standard 1/2/3% hit, with the 33/66/100% spirit to hit rating conversion. Another fairly easy choice: 3/3 Precision and 2/2 Call of Flame.

The first surprise change of the tree is Reverberation. For those that have never used it at all (which is nearly everyone), it will come as pleasant surprise to see it made a bit more useful. Just how useful it is remains to be seen, as it now reduces your shock cooldown by 0.5/1 second and is sufficiently high in the tree that it’s impossible for enhancement shaman to grab it. Elemental Focus remains the same, as does Elemental Reach. The problem with this tier is that after the first three points, you’re left with no obvious choices to make. The most likely answer will be either Improved Fire Nova, or my personal preference, two points in Elemental Warding. I find that there isn’t too much of a demand for AoE damage when you have the other casters around, and Earthquake is now channelled so the extra cooldown reduction is probably wasted. Still, it’s one of those talents you can chose to use or not.

Next up we have an unchanged Unrelenting Storm, which begs the question of exactly how mana-intensive things are going to be at 85. Still, getting spellpower, crit and MP5 from one stat isn’t a bad thing. Elemental Oath and Lava Flows both remain unchanged. Of course, this time around we go 2/2 Oath and 3/3 Lava Flows.

Tier 5 is an unchanged combination of Storm, Earth and Fire Elemental Mastery and the updated Totem of Wrath. No surprises that we take all of these. The sixth tier, on the other hand, has a reworked Shamanism giving 7/14/20% additional spellpower to Lightning Bold, Chain Lightning and Lava Burst for three points. Beside it is a two-pointer Lava Surge, with the 10/20% chance to reset your Lava Burst cooldown we’ve seen before. Whether it is any use in PvE remains to be seen. For the moment we’ll take it, and our 31-point talent of Earthquake rounds out our initial 31 points.

Moving on to the sub-specs now that they are available … In the enhancement tree, Elemental Weapons increases Flametongue spell damage by 15/30%, and Ancestral Knowledge increases mana by 5/10/15%. Ancestral Swiftness rounds out the rest of the tree for us with a 0.5-second cast time reduction on ghost wolf (remember it can be used indoors now), as well as a 7/15% run speed bonus. This leaves three points remaining.

There are virtually no useful talents in the restoration tree for us, unless you want to reduce damage taken, improve your healing done and received or reduce your healing costs. This means you’ll spend them back in elemental into Improved Fire Nova, Reverberation or Unrelenting Storm, depending on what you prefer.

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I wasn’t always this excited for the Cataclysm-ic changes to shadow priests. When I got my first look at the leaked Cataclysm talents, I was disappointed. Thankfully, the latest build of the beta integrates a new 41-point talent system that’s wiped almost all my concerns off the table. I can either choose to believe that everyone else was right and that I was too pessimistic, or I can believe that my criticism of the new talents and talent trees made an impact. Being an unrepentant egotist of the highest order, I choose the latter. But narcissistic personality disorders aside, the change to the talent system represents a huge change for the game as a whole. Was it a hit, or did Blizzard miss (again)?

Shadow priesting now begins at level 10

We get a few neat new abilities on the journey from level 80 to 85, but the biggest change to the shadow priest experience in Cataclysm is going to be felt in leveling. The way things are now, you level as a hybrid priest, taking a few holy talents here, a few disc talents there, while still spending the bulk of your points in shadow. After a few key milestones (say, levels 40 and 80), you pay to have your talent tree reset and re-evaluate your choices.

In Wrath of the Lich King, shadow priesting begins at level 40. In Cataclysm, shadow priesting will start at 10.

Once you hit level 10, Cataclysm forces you to make a choice between the three priest trees. It’s a pretty high-stakes choice. Once you choose, you’re going to be locked out of the other two trees until you’re spent your first 31 talent points. No more waffling — either embrace the light, or embrace the shadow. There can be only one.

It’s a tough choice, especially for someone playing a first character. Thankfully, the game rewards you appropriately. Choose the “sinister” shadow specialization at level 10, and you’re gifted with the ability to use Mind Flay — no talent point required. With Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain and now Mind Flay at your disposal, a level 10 shadow priest will actually start feeling like a shadow priest.

The big picture

We’ll get a little bit more specific about our new shadow priest talent tree shortly, but before we do, let’s start out with a few general thoughts. There’s a lot about our new tree that I like. There’s some stuff about it I don’t. Let’s take a quick look at some pros and cons.

• Pro: Blizzard has weeded out a lot of the “filler” talents. Talents like Shadow Reach, Shadow Focus, and Focused Mind are gone. These were necessary talents, but the never really felt “fun” to take any of them. Each point you spend feels more important now.
• Con: Some “filler” talents, like Darkness, are still there. That’s exactly the type of talent that the game developers said they wanted to get rid of.
• Pro: Five-point talents have been eliminated. Darkness, Twisted Faith and Improved Mind Blast are now three-point talents. Shadow Power maxes out at two. They seem to max out at their old 2/5 and 3/5 levels, but not to worry — shadow priests have yet to undergo their balancing process.
• Con: Shadow Weaving is gone. Sure, it’s a filler-esque ability, but isn’t it still more interesting than Darkness? In my opinion, they dumped the wrong talent.
• Pro: The discipline tree has also redone such that there are non-shadow talents worth taking in the first two tiers.
• Con: I’m going to miss getting a talent point per level. It was a nice bonus to look forward to on dinging a level.
• Pro: Useful stuff is available sooner. Case in point: Shadowform. In Wrath of the Lich King, it was located on the seventh tier, meaning you had to wait until level 40 to grab it. In Cataclysm, it’s a third-tier ability, which means you can get it at level 30.
• Con: Gnomes are able to benefit from the new talent tree just the same as the rest of us.

Spirit Tap and the first-tier shadow talents

Spirit Tap is seeing a major change in Cataclysm, and it’s definitely for the better. As it currently stands, the talent gives you a boost to your spirit upon killing an enemy that yields experience or honor. In Cataclysm, killing an enemy will instantly reward you with 5/10/15% of your max mana. And, if that wasn’t enough, you’ll get a 10/20/30% buff to your mana regen rate for the next 15 seconds after. That’s a huge boost to levelers in PvE, who will no longer need to drink after every pull. Players who prefer PvP will no doubt see dividends from it as well.

In other news, Improved Spirit Tap is gone (yawn), and Improved Shadow Word: Pain is now a first-tier ability. That’s pretty yawn-worthy too, since it’s a tiny buff to an ability that few newbie priests should be using while solo. Darkness is still around, but as I said earlier, you don’t have to put five points in it anymore.

The second shadow tier (level 20)

Improved Psychic Scream, Improved Mind Blast and Veiled Shadows are all part of this tier, which really isn’t much of a change from the way things are now. True, you can take the Veiled Shadows talent sooner in Cataclysm than you can now, but I’m not quite sure why you’d want to.

Shadowform and the third shadow tier (level 30)

The third talent tier represents a major “win” for leveling shadow priests, and it’s filled with major changes. Shadowform has been moved up, meaning it’s now available at level 30. Improved Shadowform loses its spell push back protection (that appears to be a passive part of shadow specialization now), but it does provide a 5% party-wide boost to crit. Improved Devouring Plague has been moved up to be available at an earlier level too. This is nice — it gives the spell a much needed extra bite for the solo grind.

Mind Melt and the fourth shadow tier (level 40)

The fourth tier is the new home of Mind Melt, which has essentially become an entirely new talent. In Wrath, it was a boost to the crit chance of certain spells. Now, it’s a stacking buff to boost our burst damage. That change, I like.

What I don’t like is that Vampiric Embrace is now a level 40 talent now instead of a level 30 one. I also don’t like that Improved Vampiric Embrace is gone entirely. That’s a major nerf to one of our defining abilities.

Other than that, the fourth tier is the new home of Shadow Power. Silence is located in this tier too, which actually means that you have to wait longer to get it. And you still need to invest in Improved Psychic Scream as a prerequisite. If every talent point is now twice as valuable, Silence is now twice as hard to justify taking. Lame.

Shadowy Apparition, VT and the rest of tier five (level 50)

The big news with Vampiric Touch is that there’s no news with Vampiric Touch. It remains a level 50 talent. It also still returns 1% of max mana per five seconds via Replenishment — something we were told would be nerfed.

The other two tier 5 talents are new to Cataclysm, but we’ve discussed them in Spiritual Guidance before. Shadowy Apparition is a really fun-feeling ability that allows us to deal bonus damage on fights that involve movement. The only new information we have is the proc rate: a 2/4/6% chance per tick of SW:P if you’re motionless, 20/40/60% if you’re on the move.

Also in tier 5 is Empowered Shadow Orbs, a buff to the new (albeit somewhat passive) Shadow Orb mechanic.

The sixth and seventh shadow tiers

There’s nothing really that new to report about tier 6 — just minor shuffling. Psychic Horror and Pain and Suffering are now level 60 talents, up from 50. Twisted Faith got an overhaul — it now converts spirit to hit (instead of spellpower).

Dispersion still holds as the final talent in the shadow tree. It remains unchanged.

Dipping your toes into discipline

I had one major concern with the last talent tree build out of the Cataclysm beta: The last few talent points we had to invest didn’t feel useful. Granted, that iteration of the talent tree was a mess, and it likely wasn’t drawn up with shadow priests in mind. This latest version gives us some options.

With the way the new specialization system is designed, we can only go two tiers deep (at most) into discipline, and again, only after investing 31 points in shadow. My observations on those last nine talent points:

• There’s nothing worth taking for DPS-minded shadow priests in the holy tree. (No surprise there.)
• Inner Focus is no longer usable by shadow priests. It’s a third-tier disc talent.
• Most shadow priests will look at Twin Disciplines and the mana-saving Mental Agility as their first-tier disc choices. Improved Power Word: Shield is another valid choice for those who spend a lot of time soloing, though it now only maxes out at two points.
• The only real viable shadow priest talent in tier two appears to be Improved Inner Fire.

If you’re currently sitting at level 80, a lot of this isn’t going to mean much to you. It’s easy to tell which talents are going to be DPS boosts and which ones aren’t. And we’re still not looking at much variation in the way end-game shadow priests spend their talent points: 99.9% of us will wind up with Shadowy Apparition and Vampiric Embrace, and I’ll bet that 90% of shadow PvE raiders will wind up with identical builds, right down to the last talent.

That being said, this talent tree really isn’t for the shadow priest expert. These new talent trees — shadow included — are about making the game more accessible to even the casual players. The ridiculously long tooltip for Shadowform is gone. You don’t need to do heavy research to figure out what talents you want. That’s good news for some, bad news for others.

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World of Warcraft leveling take a huge leap forward with Zygor Guides 2.0, the fastest, most powerful leveling guides in the world.

Leveling has NEVER been this easy! You will be leveling so fast with this, you might think you’re cheating. But you’re not, Joana’s leveling guide mod is 100% legal with Blizzard.

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