talent
Latest
Ghostcrawler: Okay with Titan's Grip not being an optional talent
One of the founding points in WoW's talent system, or any game's talent system, is to allow players to customize their characters based on their personal preferences. Want to play a healer with your Priest? Great, here's a few dozen holy talents. Your Paladin needs to crit some face off? Retribution is your key.Within each of these talent trees are many, many choices. And while cookie cutter specs eventually develop, the option is still there to allow for whatever spec or combinations of specs you decide works best for you. The rest of the world be damned, it's your choice.However there are some exceptions to this. These occur in talents that we all need to play, more or less. Or in more specific terms there are talents that the rest of the tree is designed around. One such talent is Titan's Grip, and according to Ghostcrawler Blizzard is okay with that (for now).
Spiritual Guidance: What each type of Priest can do and arena musings
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week, Matticus looks at what a Priest can do and reflects on his experience so far in arena. I managed to get myself into a pickup heroic Naxx group the other day. No, it wasn't on my Priest. The Priest is my baby and I can't lock him into such raids while we're still raiding. It was my Shaman that I took into heroic Naxx. After Flame Shocking and Lava Bursting my way through both Spider and Plague Wings and the first two bosses of the Military Quarter, we came across the Four Horsemen. (Yes, there is a point to this, keep reading!)
Lichborne: Reputation rewards for Death Knights in Wrath of the Lich King
Welcome to Lichborne, WoW Insider's weekly column on the Death Knight, written and named by a guy who actually doesn't have that talent. How does this keep happening, seriously? So by now, I'm sure a lot of Death Knights are, like yours truly, getting into the level 80 home stretch and trying to figure out which of the Wrath factions to grind first. If you've already read our Wrath 101 guides to reputation and to the Oracle and Frenzyheart tribes, you're off to a good start. In this week's Lichborne, we'll take it a step further by looking at the purchasable rewards for each faction with the eye of a Death Knight. As with our previous gear guide, I'm operating on the assumptions that haste and armor penetration are less desirable for Death Knights and that expertise is primarily for Death Knight tanks.
Lichborne: Gear upgrades for Death Knights in the starting zones
Welcome to Lichborne, where Daniel Whitcomb really needs a bigger boat. And maybe a more imposing minion to steer it. So by now, I assume a good chunk of us are managing to get through Outland again and are hitting the 68-70 level range, ready to jump onto a boat or zeppelin and head to Northrend. Now, up til now, I'm sure a lot of you have been sticking with your Death Knight quest gear, hoping to avoid the clown look of Northrend, or have been leveling so fast through Outland that you haven't had time to replace most of it anyway. But we're in Northrend now, guys. The difficulty is ramped up a bit, and you're really going to have to start replacing stuff pretty quickly. No worries though, Blizzard's art team has done a pretty decent job of making most of the Northrend quest rewards look like something you'd be willing to be caught dead wearing, so to speak, especially if you're into Norse mythology and imagery like I am. Today, we'll be discussing some of the best quest upgrades for a Death Knight in the first few zones of Northrend, but before we do that, I'd like to mention one more gear-related thing from our tanking column last week: The Cobalt "set."
Spiritual Guidance: Wrath Priest leveling guide from 70 to 75
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week Matticus is going to look at the introductory zones of 70 to 75! Welcome to Northrend! Ready to take on Arthas? Here is a quick primer on the road to 80. For part 1, we'll look at an example leveling spec (which isn't Shadow), early spells, different zones, and some tips.
Wrath of the Lich King: Priest roundup
Cheer up and be optimistic! Try not to be too worried about the Priest class. True we haven't changed all that much, we are still the most diverse healing class in the game. Even Elizabeth Harper and Phaelia agree that we still remain the best healers (for now). Don't be disheartened! But the challenge starts now. Hitting 80 will be a bit slower for us Holy specced players in comparison to other classes and specs. We can still hold our own against Arthas' minions! So where are we at then? State of the Game For the Priests that have just returned to the game, the biggest change is the fact that Priest racials have been removed. Hymn of Hope, Holy Nova and Devouring Plague are baseline abilities for all Priests . We'll be competing against Mages and Warlocks for gear since the three classes utilize Spirit to an extent. Circle of Healing is now a smart heal which could come with a 6 second cooldown as a penalty. Oh yeah, Prayer of Mending now draws threat for the caster instead of the target. The upside is that you can talent it to reduce the cooldown by 3 seconds with Divine Providence. Talent Trees Desperate Prayer takes up the 11 point talent slot where Holy Nova used to be. Discipline received a near complete overhaul. And guess what? It looks like it could be a raid viable spec! Check out Alex's Shadow Priest overview for a quick refresher. Dispersion: Great talent? Or greatest talent? General Tips A few notable Priest spells were covered in our Skill Mastery columns. Check out Penance and Guardian Spirit. Having fun is the most important thing you can do. If the quest givers or mobs are overloaded, find a few guildies and lock yourselves into Utgarde Keep for a while.
PTR 3.0.3 Patch Notes
Looking for the Patch Notes that are being pushed to the live servers? We've got that, too.Blizzard has released the notes for the Patch 3.0.3 on PTR (Public Test Realm). With the PTRs going to patch 3.0.3, I wouldn't be surprised to see 3.0.3 hit the live servers next week. Also, please note that these patch notes appear to be in flux and are being updated. We'll keep you posted with any changes.While patch 3.0.2 has a lot of great new content, there have been a fair share of bugs in the game. This patch will fix some of those, and change around a few other things. Remember, there will be an ongoing series of changes – the game itself won't seem normal until Wrath of the Lich King.Some highlights of this patch include: Druid talent points are refunded (only Druids) Hunter aspects are off the global cooldown Vampiric Touch has had its spell power coefficient doubled Warlocks can now use an Infernal indoors Bloodthirst cooldown is now 5 seconds No more level requirement to train gathering skills Read on after the break for the full PTR patch notes.
Spiritual Guidance: The Discipline raiding spec thoughts and review
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week Matticus is going to try to shed some light on the Discipline spec in a raiding environment! I'll admit it. I've been Holy my entire life. I'd only go Discipline just to have some fun in PvP on the weekends in order to grab myself some extra Arena points for PvP gear and what not. In the past, I did try to go all out Discipline because we had some many Priests. Variety is the spice of life right? As time went on, my Guild slowly started losing to Priests to real life until I was the only one remaining. The guild could not afford me to experiment any longer and I switched back to the comfort of Holy. Over the past weekend, I had a chance to try out Discipline in full with the new spells and expanded tree on both live and beta servers. How did it go?
Spiritual Guidance: Patch 3.0.2 - Holy and Disc Priest talent review
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week Matticus is going to light up a two-part Spiritual Guidance post about all the necessary and relevant information you need for patch 3.0.2! Welcome to part 1! This post will cover all of the new Holy and Discipline talents that will be accessible when the patch becomes live. Not only that, I've offered up some suggestions on different builds to remain raid viable (at least to the rare few guilds that are still raiding). I've isolated 1 traditional build and have 2 experimental builds for you to toy with.
Skill Mastery: Thunderstorm
Upon dipping into the Wrath beta for the first time about a month ago, I quickly realized being a Resto Shammy wasn't going to cut it for leveling from 70-80 (don't worry too much, though, dedicated Restos, as that says more about my lack of patience for the spec than the actual strength of the spec itself). I switched Elemental the first time I got in there, and haven't looked back since. And while I'm finding all kinds of fun little strengths in the Elemental tree (my spell crit is much higher than it ever was, obviously, and Lighting Overload, even though it's not new in Wrath, is a lot of fun), the real standout is the 51-point talent, Thunderstorm.Here's a spell that does its darndest to focus on two issues caster Shamans have had in the past: running out of mana and getting caught in melee. The name could probably use a tweak (it's more of a Lightningstrike than a Thunderstorm), but the spell effect is great, and while it's gone through a few tuning iterations in the beta so far, odds seem good that it'll come out being one of the best-used tools in the Elemental Shammy's arsenal.
Ask a Beta Tester: Flying in the snow, etc
FoSho asked.... Maybe I'm in the dark here, but how does one get to Dalaran since its floating in mid air. Is there a portal in a town, or do you have to be 67 to get there? I keep on hearing its "dangerous" to get to Dalaran, how so? I wouldn't call it dangerous, but you aren't going to be able to get there at level 70 without the help of a Mage or Warlock. Because Dalaran is floating high above Northrend, you need a flying mounto reach it, and when you first arrive in Northrend, your flying mount simply doesn't know how to handle the cold weather. You'll need to complete a level 77 quest chain to obtain Cold Weather Flying and reach Dalaran on your own. Alternatively, there's a quest at level 74 you can seek out in certain inns that will take you there.For more of your beta questions -- and our beta answers -- read on! But if you're the sort who wants to avoid spoilers, turn back now. We're aiming to avoid major story spoilers, but this feature is all about beta content and we can't talk about the beta without giving a few things away.
Try a Wrath of the Lich King talent spec on for size
Blizzard is making it easy for you to start planning for the launch of World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The official WoW website's talent tree calculator now represents the current WotLK build's talent trees for all classes, including the new Death Knight prestige class.You can try on all sorts of new specs taking into account the talent tree changes and new abilities coming in the expansion, which is due out later this year.The most interesting aspect to this is the ability to really explore in detail what kinds of abilities are available to the Death Knight. The information has been public for a while but if you haven't been following every single interview, it's cool to be able to go to one place and interact with what's there.
Spiritual Guidance: Holy talents - Did we get the shaft in Wrath?
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Matt scored a beta key and busied himself speccing and respeccing his Priest multiple times. This week, he takes time off to answer an important question about the Holy tree: Is it worth getting excited over? Generally, the new Holy Priests' talents in WotLK beta seem pretty underwhelming. Compare the flashy things some classes are getting, and take a look at Holy Priests... did we really need a THIRD talent to increase healing of some spells by 10%? Especially since the second one (Empowered Healing) was nerfed to always be weaker then the first one (Spiritual Healing). Yet another +healing talent for a different set of spells just smells like "we needed a talent to fill this spot and had absolutely no ideas." The way it looks right now, I expect that I'll be healing pretty much exactly the same way at 80 as I am right now - except without down ranking. So, how about it, WI? Has anything really changed for Holy Priest healing? The short answer would be no.
Spiritual Guidance: Utgarde Keep and the Nexus as Discipline
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Matt scored a beta key and busied himself speccing and respeccing his Priest multiple times and decided to test the new talents in a healing party environment. After getting a beta key, I was absolutely excited with all the Priest changes and additions made. Several of the other WoW Insider bloggers wanted to get into Utgarde Keep and the Nexus in order to experience both places. The objective was to try out our new toys, of course. The party composition determined the talents I picked up. All in all, it I had a blast tearing through both instances and learned more about the new Discipline talents intimately.
Bornakk says more about two specs per character in Wrath
On the WoW forums this morning, there was renewed gurgling about the desire to be able to respec more easily, specifically between PvP specs and raiding specs. Blue Blizzard poster, Bornakk, reconfirmed what had already been discussed at the Worldwide Invitational -- that the developers are working on a way to have two swappable talent specs. They are still working out the details but it sounds like something that's definitely coming because the Blues could've easily let this thread just die of atrophy. I'm not sure I agree with some posters who say that respeccing is a "huge pain." It's an inconvenience, yes, but then so is flying from one zone to another or waiting in line for battlegrounds. Also, as for the cost, 50 gold is merely a grain of sand to someone at level 70. (And if it isn't then, dude, what the heck are you doing out there? Buzzing on Bash Ale all day?) Conversely, how would having two different specs at your disposal make the game "too easy," as other commenters posted? My eyes are rolling so much that they may come right out of my head. (This is exactly why I try not to read much of the forums.) There was much musing about how the respec mechanic might be best implemented -- by player posters, not by Blues -- including ideas for 24 hour cool-downs, respec token systems, higher costs, lower costs and, for some reason, portals and summoning.Regardless of what mass opinions are, Blizzard's developers seem to be looking hard at what the ramifications of twin specs would do to the game's balance. They obviously spend a lot of time studying how PvP and PvE are played and seem to have an affinity for splitting these two gameplay styles and I don't think they will make it as simple as a mouse-click in Wrath.
Beta class changes on the way
MMO-Champion has posted a list of changes that are seemingly going to go live in the WotLK Beta with the next patch. The official talent calculators have also been updated to reflect the changes. Here is an overview of some of the major changes on the way:Death Knights Blood: Will of the Necropolis and Frost Aura buffed, and Blood Gorged will affect on melee damage. Unholy: Corpse Explosion and Unholy Aura buffed. Improved Corpse Explosion will have a longer effect time until full damage is done. Druid Moonkin Form and Force of Nature will have a reduced cooldown. Those spells, in addition to Tree of Life Form, will have set mana costs instead of a percentage of base. Balance: Typhoon and Starfall will have increased range, but will also cost significantly more mana. Restoration: Flourish will cost less mana (585 to 450), but it will also heal for less (1610 to 672). Feral: Primal Tenacity will be changed back to a chance to resist stun and fear effects by 5/10/15%. The range of Faerie Fire is being increased by six yards. Hunter (Survival) Hunting Party will be nerfed. It will now have at most, a 60% chance to proc on a critical strike, instead of 100%. Mage Arcane: Arcane Impact will be called Spell Impact, and will affect Blast Wave, Fire Blast, Ice Lance, and Cone of Cold, in addition to the current effects on Arcane Explosion and Arcane Blast. There will be a new tier 3 talent called Student of the Mind, which will increase spirit by 4/8/12%. Potent Spirit has been removed. Arcane Potency will require one point in Presence of Mind instead of five in Arcane Concentration. New tier 8 talent called Arcane Flows. It requires one point in Arcane Power, and reduces the cooldown on your Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility spells by 30 seconds. Netherwind Presence, rather than causing several of your spells to have a chance to grant you an instant spell, will increase spell haste by 2/4/6%.
Scattered Shots: A talent for leveling in Beast Mastery
The Scattered Shots hunter bears his or her teeth and says "RAAAWR!" to the mirror every morning in an uncouth, beastly manner -- thus affirming the beast within, which yearns for a way out to express itself.Which talents you should get as you level up is a tricky question with many different answers, many of which can turn out just fine or absolutely horrible, depending on how you play. Today I'll be taking you along on a journey through the first 40 levels of talent spending, and explaining why I think certain talent choices are better than others.One of the most important things to remember about talents is that, in spite of all their mathematical precision, they are open to poetic interpretation. Some talents give clearly superior advantages, while in other cases it's mostly a matter of opinion as to which one fits your play-style best. Sometimes the talents that look best on paper aren't the ones that will really help you the most when the going gets rough. Likewise, some talents are designed more for endgame use at level 70, even though they appear early on in the talent tree, while others are better for leveling up, and you may wish to drop them later on once you finish leveling.Most of my talent choices today are going to be in the Beast Mastery tree, for instance. Some people may say that they like Marksmanship or Survival best, and certainly that's their right. But from most of the people I've talked to, the general consensus is that Beast Mastery is best for both leveling and early endgame raiding, too. While talking about these talents, I'll list your level and the number of talent points you have at each stage, so that it's easier to keep track of your talent resources.
Build Shop: Shaman 18/43/0
Today on Build Shop, we're going to take a look at a Shaman build that's a little different from the usual since we've already covered the basic cookie-cutter specs of Elemental, Enhancement, and Mike Schramm's personal variant of Restoration. The Enhancement spec that we'll tinker with will try to focus on the built-in synergy between some Elemental and Enhancement talents, as opposed to the more familiar complement of Restoration talents. This Enhancement build is focused on dealing damage, with less focus on the raid or party utility that Restoration talents provide. You can take a quick look at the build here.Shock and aweFor optimum DPS, an Enhancement Shaman's spell cycle should be punctuated by shocks, which are instant cast damage-dealing spells that don't interfere with a Shaman's swing timer. The biggest problem with utilizing shocks as part of an offensive spell cycle is the prohibitive mana cost, which can make a dent on an Enhancement Shaman's relatively low mana pool. To alleviate this , we take 5/5 Convection from the first tier of the Elemental tree, which reduces the cost of Lightning and Shock spells by 10%.
What are you looking forward to the most in WotLK?
There have been lots of little bits of news and information coming out about Wrath of the Lich King lately. With the World Wide Invitational 2008 just around the corner where WotLK will be playable again for us all, and the news that Wrath is in alpha, we can expect to see more and more come out about the game.With this expectation of the beta and eventual release building, a lot of people are getting excited about different things. So I want to know, what are you most excited about?For me, I'm most excited about seeing the new end game raid content. I'm with a very dedicated group of raiders right now who do about 20 hours a week of raiding, and it's a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll all still be around in WotLK and get to push into the new content quickly and with a lot of zeal.Then there is the Death Knight. Who isn't thrilled at the chance to play a new class? We haven't ever seen a new class in WoW, and it's bound to throw a wrench in the way a lot of folks play the game. Seeing the Death Knight get integrated into raiding will be a very interesting thing to watch.
A literally talentless player
This guy is either a clueless newb or an obvious troll (I lean towards a bit of trolling-- it's too perfectly designed to provoke a response), but either way, he claims that he didn't just forget to use his talents, he actively chose not to. That's right-- he claims he can go all the way to 70 without using talents at all.Even if he is kidding (and he must be, right? the talents you choose are based on your own "skill and merits"), what would that be like? Could you imagine going to 70 without Nature's Swiftness or Vampiric Embrace or Tactical Mastery? I guess it's possible, but unless you just wanted to prove you could do it (hey, people have done crazier things), how hard would the game really be without talents? By definition, no talent is necessary for the core gameplay-- the whole point of having three trees is that you can go without the other two you don't choose. But is it possible to build a viable character using no talents at all?Troll away, talentless player. But thanks for making me consider something I'd never thought of before: just how much do the talents you choose govern your gameplay? And if you didn't have any of the talents that you have, how much would your game player differ, or suffer?
