talents
Latest
The Light and How to Swing It: Talents and glyphs for tanking Mogu'shan Vaults
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Protection specialist Matt Walsh spends most of his time receiving concussions for the benefit of 9 other people, obsessing over his hair, and maintaining the tankadin-focused blog Righteous Defense. My brawny colleague Dan Desmond covered this topic for his two-handed cohort earlier this week, but I think it's also worth exploring for all the tankadins out there. Namely, what talents and glyphs can be utilized to make tanking the first raid of tier 14 a little easier? Sure the new hotness is Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring (and I'll get to those!), but I expect that the vast majority of players are still actively working on clearing Mogu'shan Vaults, or are slogging through it weekly in LFR for precious, precious VP. Even if you've been doing this place ad nauseam for the last few weeks, there are always little tweaks that can be made to get the job done faster with less damage taken! For reference, these are the base talents and glyphs I go with. So any suggestions I make will be what deviates from those. Especially with regards to Glyph of the Battle Healer, you should make sure to have that up at all times and should be actively tanking with Seal of Insight. It can make a noticeable difference in your survivability, and can pay some dividends for the survivability of your melee colleagues.
WoW Archivist: Strange choices behind WoW's earliest talent trees
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? It's strange to think that players who first start playing in Mists might have no idea what the old talent trees looked like. To them, the new talent system is simply the status quo and the image above conjures no memories. The status quo has never lasted very long for talents in WoW. Through the years, talents have changed possibly more than any other aspect of the game. It's a good thing, too, because the earliest talent trees needed a lot of work. Let's take a look back! The first beta talents It's not easy to find solid information about the first iteration of talent trees from early beta. From what I can gather, WoW's original talents were more like spell ranks (which have also since been removed). You could invest talent points into particular spells to give them more damage/healing, longer range, etc. These talents were also tied to stats. By investing talent points, you gained stats relevant to your class. These talents were generally considered workable but lackluster. They were removed from the beta in patch 0.6. Blizzard promised to "make them even cooler than before," and players speculated heavily about what the new trees might look like.
Talent exclusivity and the new talent system
When discussing the new talent system, one of the things that always fascinates me is how, if you could take two talents from the same tier, you absolutely would. Imagine if you could take Second Wind and Enraged Regeneration. You'd be unkillable. If you could take all three talents from the healing tier at level 30, you'd really be unkillable. Seriously, in order to kill a warrior with all three talents you'd have to do a ridiculous amount of damage and CC to prevent the use of ER and Impending Victory. This is of course why you can't have all three, so that all three can (in theory at least) be designed to be strong, compelling talents. I really like ER for tanking, and am currently using it as my tank talent, while I have yet to settle between Second Wind and Impending Victory for my DPS specs. Talent exclusivity is nothing new in WoW, of course. We're used to 31 (and before that, 41, and before that 31) point talents that we can only get one of. But the original talent system was built with a lot more synergy in mind - it was expected and possible for people to choose talents based entirely on other talents they had and how those talents would work together.
Why I Play: EVE Online
Sci-fi MMO EVE Online is possibly the most polarising online game in existence. It has some of the genre's most loyal fans and spawns some of its biggest news stories, but most people just can't stand the user interface and gameplay. It's been called boring, overcomplicated, and a griefer's paradise, but even those who don't play it often still watch from the sidelines as each insane story of theft or corruption emerges from the sandbox. Most games can only keep my attention for a few months at a time, but somehow I've played EVE for over eight and a half years. I've heard it said that EVE is a long-term commitment, a statement I find hard to argue with as at only 26 years old I've been playing EVE almost continuously for a third of my life. It's not just been a game to me; at times it's been a way of life, a refuge from stress, a way to stay in touch with friends, and even a place to learn skills that can apply to the real world. Thanks to Massively, my attachment to EVE has even grown from a hobby to a career in writing and games journalism. I've had numerous periods of low activity in EVE and even quit for months at a time, but something always brings me back to the world's biggest sci-fi sandbox. In this article, I look back at what drew me to EVE initially, some of the unusual factors that have kept me playing EVE over the past eight years, and the reason I'm still motivated to subscribe to this day.
Class guides and resources for Mists of Pandaria
In the interest of providing a fast, easy-to-use resource for every class, we've gathered up our favorite guides, best lists, and most relevant posts into a convenient list. Check back often, because we'll keep these resources up to date throughout the last days of the Cataclysm and deep into the Mists of Pandaria. Check back as we add more guides, more resources, and the best links. If your favorite is missing, we'll be adding it soon. Death knight Glyphs round-up (and more!) PvE frost knights in Mists of Pandaria PvE blood death knights Unholy death knights by Icy Veins Druid Cat and moonkin talent walk-through Cat and moonkin talent walk-through, part 2 Guardian druid enchants, mods, gems, and buff items Restoration druid enchants, mods, gems, and buff items Resto druids by Icy Veins Patch 5.0.4 for balance and feral druids Patch 5.0.4 for guardian and restoration druids Video guide for PvP Boomkin and more (warning: language)
Blood Pact: Core summary for warlocks in patch 5.0
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill binged on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series while trying to gather faction loot when the beta's LFR was out of service. She's still in Season 2, and still has more loot to collect. I didn't realize my paladin's transmog from last week would be so popular. For those who are still wondering, here are the items on Wowhead, with a sword and that fel green, two-handed axe for extras. Moving on, it's time to break out the 101 skills again. Warlocks have been reworked in several ways, though the core still remains familiar. In the coming weeks, I will go over the changes to and general likings of all warlocks, everything you need to know about our pets, and a quick rundown of how each spec should play out. As we get closer to the release of raids, I'll write up the item enhancements like consumables, enchants, and gems, as well as collecting all the faction and dungeon gear in one spot for readers. This week, let's get changes that affect every warlock out of the way.
Blood Pact: Looking ahead at the 5.0 warlock
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill procrastinates writing with dungeon soloing as she researches for two-handed transmogrification. The pre-expansion patch is coming for the PTR, and while I'll be stuck with the MoP beta client, we all still need a post about what's changing for warlocks. There's still a strong sense of familiarity when playing in Mists of Pandaria, but things have definitely changed. It'll be nice to know what to look out for when the pre-expansion patch goes live. I haven't come close to talking about everything yet, so here's a chance to see where I'm going or to suggest your own ideas.
Blood Pact: Leveling is much better in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill delayed downloading the new beta build in favor of getting her witch doctor to 60. Priorities! With the overhaul to the warlock class coming in Mists of Pandaria, guildmates and friends have been wondering whether to revive old warlocks or not. Those without warlocks on their character screens have been asking the age-old question: Should I level one now or wait until the expansion hits? Unless you're particularly masochistic about your leveling, my advice is to wait. Here's why.
No-brainer talent and cookie-cutter builds
I was reading the forums the way I do recently, when I came across this thread. In it, the original poster Strawberry asked for examples of talents in the new talent system that players would always take. In the current talent system, as an example, no fury warrior would avoid Flurry. You'd be an idiot to do so. Ghostcrawler chimed in, indicating that he wanted to increase people's awareness of the thread and get them participating, because the thread was useful. The reason it is useful is because no-brainer talents are something Blizzard's trying to do away with in the new talent scheme, and the only way to really know what talents are must haves is to have people tell them. The entire purpose of the new talent system is to promote choice and do away with the cookie-cutter builds of the previous and current talent paradigm. Cataclysm actually ended up with a lot more choice than previous iterations -- you usually have a few talent points left over when you're done getting the basics down -- but Mists of Pandaria is poised to remove the concept of going elsewhere for a spec or copying someone else's build entirely. This got me wondering. Assuming the thread does its job and helps identify talents that are too good to pass up right now and make adjustments to bring them in line, will that make the game harder or easier for new and inexperienced players?
Breakfast Topic: Would you like tri-spec?
I have a problem, dear reader. I'm an addict. You may be the same, and if you are, a part of me feels for you. The rest of me is glad you're along with me for the ride! What do I mean? Well, I get addicted to specs. I find one that I like, and I stick with it. You might well be aware, if you read the Blood Sport columns I write, that I do a lot of PvP, but I also raid. And, the vast majority of the time, I do the same in both settings. My shaman's talent specs are PvP restoration/PvE restoration. My priest? PvP discipline/PvE discipline (I'm in love with Atonement Archangel right now.) My mage? PvP fire/PvE fire. Are you beginning to see a pattern emerging? So where is the problem in focusing on one talent spec for both your options? Well, take my shaman. I have thousands upon thousands of conquest points and valor points. I have full, epic-gemmed, Cataclysmic Gladiator gear. My PvE gear is all 397 or above. So when the raid drops and tokens come my way because we have nobody else to take them, what do I do? I play restoration in either PvP or PvE most days, and while I'd love to give elemental a go, I don't want to spend all my time respeccing. I would give ... I don't know -- what's an organ we don't really need? My appendix. I would give my appendix for a third talent spec. Heck, take my tonsils, while you're at it. How about you? Would you use a third talent spec? Are you like me in sticking to one talent tree in two iterations? Do you long for more flexibility? Or do you not really feel the need for it? And, of course, why?
Breakfast Topic: Will you miss your class as it is now?
No matter what class you play, it's going to change in Mists of Pandaria. The talent system alone is so different that you're going to have to reassess some basic ideas about your spec. Some classes are changing more than others, and this fact is making people dump their mains once the expansion launches. Cynwise at Cynwise's Warcraft Manual is playing his warlock. He writes I want to enjoy playing a Warlock as they are now, flawed yet challenging, before they go away. I can understand this sentiment. For many, it's like their classes are changing so much that it's not the same class. Even if the changes are for the better, it can be hard to accept so many differences from the character you know and love. Personally, I'm impatient. Now that I've seen what's up in the MoP beta, I want it. I want it now. I love my red panda and mistweaver monk, and I don't want to play anything else. I think that my attitude is unfortunate; however, as I'm not taking advantage of the game I'm paying for as much as I should. Are you savoring the now-ness of your main? Will you miss your class as it is? Or are you anxious for the changes that will come in Mists of Pandaria?
The Light and How to Swing It: Glyph of Inquisition and the myth of the no-brainer
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions! Back in October, the blues issued a challenge to themselves, a goal for their new talent system in Mists of Pandaria -- there would be no mandatory talents, zero "no-brainers" or similarly choiceless situations. The same has been said for glyphs in the past, straight from the mouthparts of the head crab himself. Now we all know that there has always been a chasm of varying width separating what the designers intend for a system and what we as players experience. Sometimes the devs do really well and the gap is but a crack in the sidewalk, while others look more Springfield Gorge, and others still like Valles Marineris on Mars. Even so, we can hardly blame them -- we players, as a whole, are a fickle bunch. It is only natural that a group numbering in the millions would have diverse opinions on what works and what doesn't, particularly when it pertains to how each of us play the game.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Practical talents in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. Before I get into this week's topic, I talked about War Banner this week (in case you missed it). If asked for my opinion of the ability, it would be good but not yet great. Each banner needs a little love -- perhaps a longer duration or more of a powerful effect -- before I'm totally sold on it. But I did enjoy playing around with it. This week, however, I want to talk about the content we have, not the content we're going to have. The reason for that is because it will help me illustrate what I like and dislike about the current talent paradigm and how we're losing things at the same time we're gaining them with the new talent system. I am not calling out for the new scheme to be scrapped. On the whole, I am a big supporter of it. But that doesn't mean the current talent system doesn't have things to teach us. So let me begin with the following statement. I deliberately specced fury for heroic Spine of Deathwing because I wanted to do less damage. No, I'm not explaining that here. You want to know why? You come with me past the jump. Them there's the rules.
Is the beta spellbook layout an improvement?
When I first log in with the default UI, I always enable all four extra action bars on my screen. I then drag every possible spell I can onto my bars. I figure out what's important later as I beat up various quest mobs, reading tooltips mid-cast and dragging abilities around mid-fight. I suppose I'm just too excited (or impatient) to sit with the spellbook for five minutes. Yet I still noticed the spellbook changes in the beta. My racials, guild perks, and flying licenses were jumbled up in the same tab as my spell passives, talented abilities, and regular abilities. Without even a search box up, I had to flip through all the tabs multiple times to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Ghostcrawler posted two weeks ago about the pros and cons of the new beta spellbook design. I don't quite know what four to five tabs he's talking about -- to me, everything appears to be one big mess in the same tab.
Raid Rx: An overview of druids in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. Last week, we covered some of the more notable monk abilities along with the expected playstyle. Recently, the level cap on beta has been raised to level 87, allowing every class access to their new level 87 spell. Much of the talk this week on the major sites and blogs is about Symbiosis. We touched on it several times, but now we get to take a closer look at it in further detail.
Encrypted Text: The Shock and Awe build
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. If you have been raiding 10-man Dragon Soul every week, Wrathion should be handing over the Fangs of the Fathers any day now. Even the second rogues in most 25-man groups will be collecting their last Elementium Gem Clusters shortly. For many rogues, these daggers are the first legendary weapons that they've ever acquired. When you receive them from Wrathion, it might feel a bit overwhelming. What do you do with these weapons? What will they do to you? There is a quote that's been passed down from thief to thief, assassin to assassin, and rogue to rogue for generations: "If your blades are happy, you're happy." You want your weapons to work for you, and not the other way around. You can't starve your blades, trying to forcefully adjust their diet to tolerate Morchok's rocky hide or Hagara's snow cones. If you want to keep your blades happy, you have to feed them what they really want: player blood, and lots of it.
All the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria previews you can shake an empty fist at
In the wee hours of this morning, the press NDA for World of Warcraft's Mists of Pandaria expansion came tumbling down, and our sister site WoW Insider has a bounty of coverage to share. The much anticipated -- and much debated -- expansion is slated for release this year and will include a new continent, the Monk hero class, the Pandaren race, pet battles, a level cap increase, and a massive overhaul of the game's talent system. World of Warcraft players are undoubtedly fixated on the expansion, as January's 4.3 patch was announced to be the last major update to the game before MoP arrives. You can check out all of the juicy info squeezed from the press beta groves after the jump, including hands-on impressions and insights you won't find anywhere else!
Mists of Pandaria tries to breathe new life into an old World of Warcraft
Video games these days have a shorter shelf life than ever before. Titles fall out of the top ten within days or weeks (if they ever get there at all), there are awesome new releases arriving every month or so, and even the biggest games are on a yearly (if that) sequel schedule at this point. And yet World of Warcraft has remained a constant. Blizzard's MMO has held millions of players in sway for over half a decade, and those players have killed countless boars, cleared out endless quests, dungeons, and raids, and have vanquished not one but three world-threatening expansion bosses, in the forms of Illidan Stormrage, Arthas the Lich King, and Deathwing and his Cataclysm.So Blizzard is perhaps taking on its hardest task ever with the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion. There's no question in the halls of the (recently quieter) Blizzard campus in Irvine, California that the game is at a crossroads of sorts. Blizzard's formula for WoW expansions (define a baddie, and lead a player to gear and level up to the final fight) has worked so far, but it's almost as if the company realizes that the old tricks are getting old.Blizzard needs, then, to take World of Warcraft, one of history's most-played, most-traversed, and most-conquered games, and make it feel new. "This is definitely different fare from any expansion we've tried so far," VP of Creative Development Chris Metzen said in a presentation to assembled press. He then talked about the game on a much longer scale than a few weeks, a few months, or even a Call of Duty-length year. "The big global threat that's coming, to define the next couple years of WoW's gameplay, is really war itself."%Gallery-150969%
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Toolkits and themes
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host. This week, in a discussion of War Banner, some interesting points were made. In his response to the discussion, Daxxari said something that really made me think about the warrior class and where it is going -- more importantly, where it can go. Daxxari - War Banner Ultimately, we wanted to try and expand the design potential for warriors a bit. Increasingly, it seemed that any new ability had to be another type of movement, a weapon strike, or shout, or it wouldn't feel like a warrior ability. We wanted to try something new, and we're hoping that warriors will give them a shot once we're in beta and let us know how it feels. source What I really found worth examining is this idea of what feels like a warrior ability, exactly. So many people objected to War Banner based around the idea that it's a totem, and totems are shaman-only. War Banner isn't going to be implemented like a totem. But the idea of trying to design new abilities that broaden the feel of warrior abilities leads us to ask what, exactly, does feel like a warrior ability. Should all warrior abilities be shouts, movement-based abilities or weapon strikes?
Addon and UI tips for new WoW players
Each week, WoW Insider's Mathew McCurley brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. Can you believe there are people out there who have yet to play World of Warcraft? It's totally true. In an attempt to be investigative and thought-provoking, I've begun writing a few pieces on bringing brand new MMO players into World of Warcraft more than seven years after the game's initial release. For the purposes of experimentation and all that jazz, I turned off every single addon while my ... subjects ... toiled away. It was uncomfortable at first watching an addon-less screen, but bearings were gotten and life went on. However, there were a few points of the user interface that were not necessarily troubling to my brand new player, but moreso gave a feeling of being "lost" on the screen during moments of tense combat or heavy movement. I wrote down the observations that I believe new players can benefit the most from. With little to no customization needed, these addons and tips can greatly enhance a new player's starting experience while removing some of the tedium of certain tasks mixed with hard-to-explain concepts. Maybe we can even get some of these features in game as part of Blizzard's new player initiative.
