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 July 14, 2010, 05:14:32 AM
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Exalted
Posts: 434
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I saw that, but the trees still look like they need a whole lot of work considering that they are basically forcing at least 2 PvP talents into each tree to hit the 31 Pt talent so I expect that that is a placehoder/typo especially considering there are very few "interesting" or optional talents in the way the new trees are formed.
I really hope that Blizzard isn't considering forced PvP talents as something "interesting" especially since most of the non PvP focused talents are basically the usual run of the mill mandatory PvE damage increasing talents.
It will be very disappointing if you have to take Invocation, Imp Counterspell or Prismatic Cloak just to get farther in the tree and especially of you are forced to take slow to get Arcane Power. None of those talents are really "interesting", you are just basically being forced to chose between worthless for PvE PvP talents in order to get the PvE talents you want.
I mean I guess that Prismatic Cloak and Invocation can be "interesting" as leveling talents, but they really don't bring much of a different dimension to raiders. I understad Imp Poly in an environment with increased need to CC, but you still have to take basically worthless talents in order to get farther in the tree even after taking Imp Polly.
And I understand that we are getting a Bloodlust, but Icy Veins is becoming a Frost only talent even though it is tantalizingly close to the bottom of the tree as opposed to the now obviously Arcane only Focus Magic. Talented abilities that we have come to rely on are becoming tree only abilities, while optional abilities like Slow, Blastwave, Ice Barrier and Dragon's Breath are being forced on mages that have eschewed them for the last two expansions.
If talents that PvE players have never found use for before being forced on PvE players just to get talents that we like and need is interesting, I am really not as interested in Cataclysm as a was before.
I really do hope that knowing that this is a preliminary build that this is not the direction that Blizzard is taking.
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Players say, "polymorph is a chore, not an ability; we should get more damage as compensation for having to to be responsible for CC. Or hey, take away polymorph and give us herpes, the herpes would be more fun."
~Lhivera
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July 14, 2010, 01:51:56 PM
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Kinda bummed about icy veins going frost-only and I feel a bit similar to Shand re: taking talents that I just won't use just to get a full 31 points in a tree. I was also hoping for a bit more "choice" in making each spec - as it is, there's pretty much one PVE build per tree and you just get to pick which "utility" (ie ones you'll never use) talents you want to use as filler. I was hoping when GC was first describing the new trees and talking about taking out the uninteresting talents and forcing players to make "choices" that the choices would be between "core" talents - ie not being able to get everything you want in a talent build and having to choose between two options that you like. This is kinda the opposite - I have everything I want and don't particularly care about the rest. I don't pvp with my mage and have no interest in doing so, so the pvp talents are (essentially) useless to me.
It really seems like they're pushing for a "can't fail" talent system, which just means that there's no difference now between players that take the time to read each talent description and make informed decisions and players that just take stuff willy-nilly. We'll all have the same build. Why should I even bother reading the talents when I have to put so many points into a tree that I can't help but get all the useful stuff? What's the next step - remove talents all together and just pick "fire/frost/arcane", granting the "talents" as skills within your specialization as you level up?
Blargh. Hopefully this is just a first pass.
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July 14, 2010, 02:02:44 PM
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Exalted
Posts: 1213
(A unicorn goes here)
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Or, better yet, you could spec for PvP & PvE with the same spec (and probably a loss in DPS for some specs, but hopefully not too noticeable for all). The idea is you still get lawldeeps, but you also get several 'free' talent points to spend on goodies.
Also, there's plenty of possible failure, and these are bare bones trees, but some of them look like they've been done well.
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The Ultimate Guide to socketing as a tank.The All-Seeing Eye on the Washington Monument: "The Eye's become a crucial part of Homeland Security. It costs a lot to maintain, but it sees all." - Onion News Network
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July 14, 2010, 02:11:27 PM
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Exalted
Posts: 1767
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as it is, there's pretty much one PVE build per tree and you just get to pick which "utility" (ie ones you'll never use) talents you want to use as filler. As it was before, you were forced to spend truckloads of points on crappy passive talents that didn't do anything, but you were balanced around taking them. As it is now, you just skip the crappy passive stuff and get active abilities or passives that actually do noticable things. The new system might not be the messiah, but certainly people can see the improvement. Ok, so you might think you'll never use ice barrier. But wouldn't you rather have Ice Barrier than a +3% frost damage talent, and just be balanced around not having the 3% anyway? It really seems like they're pushing for a "can't fail" talent system, which just means that there's no difference now between players that take the time to read each talent description and make informed decisions and players that just take stuff willy-nilly. We'll all have the same build. Why should I even bother reading the talents when I have to put so many points into a tree that I can't help but get all the useful stuff? What's the next step - remove talents all together and just pick "fire/frost/arcane", granting the "talents" as skills within your specialization as you level up? C'mon now, lets be honest. Talent trees weren't some academic pursuit to begin with. The bolded part really kills me. Now you can get all the interesting abilities without having to spend 40 points on bloat-talents, and theres a complaint about it? =D
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Jaw dropping damage
Blue bar vanishes quickly
Get in your corner
- The Mage Haiku, by Bovinity -
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July 14, 2010, 02:47:48 PM
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New
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I dunno, I guess the complaint more comes from the fact that I was hoping they'd get rid of the bloat-talents and give us some interesting choices between useful talents. I love the idea of paring out the bloat and the boring passives, I was just hoping for more new and interesting (and active) stuff. Maybe it's deceiving because the talent trees look so much smaller and I need to spend more time going over how much they've changed the existing talents. Expectations vs reality and all that jazz.
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July 14, 2010, 03:55:24 PM
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Exalted
Posts: 434
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My biggest problem is that some of the "interesting" choices aren't choices at all, you don't have a choice whether you take Dragon's Breath or not, you HAVE to take it period flat out, its not a choice and its not interesting. 41 points are fine, but make it a choice, as it stands every single Fire Mage will have Dragon's Breath that is not remotely interesting. Every Arcane Mage will have Slow and every Frost Mage will have Ice Barrier.
Add some non-game changing talents that don't increase damage, but that slightly alter playstyle and that is an "interesting" choice so that we can have some choice in how we play our mage. Like I said, I know its preliminary so hopefully something like this will happen.
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Players say, "polymorph is a chore, not an ability; we should get more damage as compensation for having to to be responsible for CC. Or hey, take away polymorph and give us herpes, the herpes would be more fun."
~Lhivera
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July 14, 2010, 04:18:18 PM
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Exalted
Posts: 1767
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So your complaint is that Dragon's Breath is a prerequisite for Living Bomb? I mean, if that's a structure issue you can take it up with them, I suppose. I don't see how Dragon's Breath being a direct prerequisite is any worse than before when all the passives were indirect prequisites, though. Every Arcane Mage will have Slow and every Frost Mage will have Ice Barrier. Every arms warrior will have Mortal Strike. Every Marks hunter will have Aimed Shot. Etc etc. I guess I don't see a problem with that. I actually think it's a good thing. For too long mages (Even moreso than other classes) were defined just by what color their spells were and which spec was highest DPS this month. I don't see anything wrong with spec-defining abilities actually being part of the spec now. In short, I always thought it was a shame that Mages had all these abilities in their trees but were compelled to take silly passive damage increase talents and skip over all the Slow, Blast Wave, Ice Barrier, etc abilities. Now the system is encouraging mages to take their spec-defining abilities, and this is a bad thing? Also, I wouldn't say you're being "forced" into PvP talents. Just tinkering around with the fire tree, it's perfectly easy to get down to Living Bomb while skipping the PvP-oriented stuff. In fact, you'll want to because you'll probably want some of the early arcane talents too, rather than spending 31 in Fire.
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« Last Edit: July 14, 2010, 04:42:36 PM by Bovinity »
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Jaw dropping damage
Blue bar vanishes quickly
Get in your corner
- The Mage Haiku, by Bovinity -
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July 14, 2010, 08:47:35 PM
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Exalted
Posts: 1213
(A unicorn goes here)
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You don't like Slow, because it's expensive, lasts too little, and is a 'PvP talent'. Consider for a moment that CC spells can have differing effects for NPCs and Players, then consider that they could throw this effect on Slow. Also consider that before, their response was, 'Then don't take it', but now you have to, SO IT HAD BETTER WORK. Create a topic on the Blizz forum stating this, showing that Slow could be more interesting if, say, it had a 30 second duration (or one minute, or something, although that feels a bit high, five minutes could work depending on the argument) on PvE enemies (consider you're going to be getting MASSIVE amounts of mana due to the int you'll be getting soon, so base costs should be even less of a % of mana), that this high level talent feels lack-luster, that it still feels like it's a pre-Cata talent.
I don't really have much to say about Dragon's Breath, unfortunately, beyond this: Imagine they gave you one extra talent point in patch 3.6, and that talent point was for Dragon's Breath. Would you be against a free talent?
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The Ultimate Guide to socketing as a tank.The All-Seeing Eye on the Washington Monument: "The Eye's become a crucial part of Homeland Security. It costs a lot to maintain, but it sees all." - Onion News Network
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July 15, 2010, 03:55:20 AM
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Exalted
Posts: 434
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So your complaint is that Dragon's Breath is a prerequisite for Living Bomb? I mean, if that's a structure issue you can take it up with them, I suppose. I don't see how Dragon's Breath being a direct prerequisite is any worse than before when all the passives were indirect prequisites, though. Every Arcane Mage will have Slow and every Frost Mage will have Ice Barrier. Every arms warrior will have Mortal Strike. Every Marks hunter will have Aimed Shot. Etc etc. I guess I don't see a problem with that. I actually think it's a good thing. For too long mages (Even moreso than other classes) were defined just by what color their spells were and which spec was highest DPS this month. I don't see anything wrong with spec-defining abilities actually being part of the spec now. In short, I always thought it was a shame that Mages had all these abilities in their trees but were compelled to take silly passive damage increase talents and skip over all the Slow, Blast Wave, Ice Barrier, etc abilities. Now the system is encouraging mages to take their spec-defining abilities, and this is a bad thing? Also, I wouldn't say you're being "forced" into PvP talents. Just tinkering around with the fire tree, it's perfectly easy to get down to Living Bomb while skipping the PvP-oriented stuff. In fact, you'll want to because you'll probably want some of the early arcane talents too, rather than spending 31 in Fire. There is a huge difference in semantics and semantics only and between the "you get it automatically when you spec into this tree" abilities and the "well just because you are this spec and have to take 31 points to do anything else" talents, one you get automatically, the other they pretend you get a choice, but they really are "you must take this at x level in order to get y talent (which you may not even want either but are forced to take to get points in another tree)". One is a bonus, but the other is forced. There is literally no choice on whether to take Slow and Arcane Power or Dragon's Breath and Living Bomg or Ice Barrier and Deep Freeze. You literally HAVE to take both talents in whatever tree you pick once you hit whatever level they decide if you want to put a single point in another tree. I get that you all are fine with what I am calling "forced PvP talents" and you are calling "utility talents", and maybe my initial argument is confusing, but my biggest issue is that there is no actual choice involved between getting x talent at level 10 and being forced to take y and z talents at level (more than likely at 70). Blizzard is claiming "options", but we are becoming more limited than we were before. I would really be OK with all of the changes if the trees stayed the same, but there were no linked talents unless the talents were directly related. Give the option to take the points in Blazing Speed and still get Living Bomb without having to take Dragon's Breath. That is real options. As it stands Slow has nothing to do with Arcane Power, Dragon's Breath has nothing to do with Living Bomb and Ice Barrier has nothing to do with Deep Freeze. There is absolutely NO reason that they should be related. It is fine to have an automatic "this is your spec ability" and a "this is your 31 point talent ability" but having any other ability forced in the interim does not make anything that Blizzard has professed as their goal of giving "interesting options" even close to a choice.
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Players say, "polymorph is a chore, not an ability; we should get more damage as compensation for having to to be responsible for CC. Or hey, take away polymorph and give us herpes, the herpes would be more fun."
~Lhivera
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