The Daily Blues

It's possible you will only get the benefit of the tree in which you've spent the most points, or will only get the benefit from say 50 points maximum with the bonus chosen from the tree with the most points in it. We'll have to see when the talent trees are more finalized and we start to figure out build strategies.

Overall, the goal is to spend points as you want, and not feel penalized for spending into another tree or feel like you have to game things by spending more points than you want in your tree. Remember these passive bonuses are designed to give you flexibility, not lock you into anything.

Imagine you spend 55 points in Retribution, so you get the maximum passive talent tree bonuses from that tree. Your remaining points you can spend where you want, in Retribution, Protection or Holy. It does discourage some kind of true hybrid build where you go partway down multiple trees, but we aren't really trying to support those, and they aren't very popular today.

The flexibility comes (hopefully) in having more discretionary points that you can spend on talents you like, rather than sacrificing raw damage, healing or tanking to do so.

It's designed partially with new players in mind. It will be much harder to have a truly terrible talent spec because you won't be able to help but be reasonably good at your chosen role.

The mastery stat itself won't show up until high level, and even when it does, you should have more confidence that it's a stat you want instead of say trying to figure out the percent of your damage that is physical damage to calculate if armor pen is good for you or not.

I admit that adding passive bonuses at all to talent trees complicates the talent feature slightly. We hope to make up for that by there being less paranoia about picking "the wrong" spec. The wrong spec might only be a slight loss instead of a tragic loss. As a point of comparison, dual-spec complicates talents a little, but overall we think it was good for the game.

We've updated World of Warcraft's five-year anniversary site to include a frank interview with Fraya, the leader of the Enigma guild on the Deathwing realm. In the interview, we speak with Fraya about his most memorable moments over five years of playing, Enigma's experience in high-end raiding, and where the guild expects to find itself in Cataclysm and beyond. Check out the anniversary page for our full discussion.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wowanniversary/interview/

While there, be sure to read our interviews with members from the guild Shadowclan, and with forum MVP Palehoof if you have not already!

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I remember the first day I started working here almost exactly five years ago. I was told that no one in the company, from janitorial staff to Mike Morhaime, is allowed to have any sort of direct in-game benefits on live realms, such as free gold, gear, etc. Not only did the message stick, it's one of the reasons I still absolutely love working for Blizzard. There are great standards and practices here exercised from the top down, and that hasn't changed since I first started. :)

Female dwarves ARE beautiful, those who say otherwise are simply jealous of the their inherent dwarven beauty.