◊ Lord BEEF

I wouldn't stress too much about the actual numbers on the talents. For test of faith they could easily change it so when you heal someone below 50% health you get 100% crit chance and it heals for 800% more than normal.

Try to keep criticism about the idea behind the abilities if at all possible, not the specific numbers.

 

Bismar

Also I'd say it's a PvP talent, and seems reasonable as such.

The synergy between the new priest crit stuff and the already extant Inspiration talent (that grants armor) seems pretty interesting actually.

 

Alcemon

A short comment about the healing priest preliminary talents.

Three prominent builds seem to emerge from this:

1. (53/18/0)MT healer Disc: the greater Heals from this spec will regen mana on your party(Shadow priest-like), apply a stackable buff that reduces damage and increases healing on the target (Treeform-like) and will leave behind a special shield and proc Inspiration on crits.
   As an added bonus this spec has access to Pain Suppression and Power Infusion with reduced cooldowns and the new Penance DPS/Heal spell.
   This could be the "Start raiding" spec, since most of the key abilities that you gain are gear independent(Pain Suppression, Grace). So you want to use this spec when your gear is still not that good.
   Pairing up this spec with a Shadow Priest in the same group should also prove to be amusing thanks to Rapture.
   Finally, this spec could actually work as a"off-dpser" too, if the need for one should ever arise...and it continues the theme of improving hybrids' "offrole"
2. (14/67/0)Raid/MT healer Holy: Divine Providence provides help for raid healing, while Serendipidity(Priest T5-like talent) and Improved Holy Concentration give more staying power for MT healers(Gheal, and Fheal).
   From this early version, this spec seem to be the most versatile and powerful one and it only gets better when your gear improves thanks to all those % modifying talents.
   Hopefully Guardian Spirit will be as good as Circle of Healing and not follow the tradition of the pre-expansion Holy endtree talents.
3. (23/48/0)Hybrid: you get Divine Spirit, Circle of Healing and all the MT healing goodies of the Holy tree. But you are missing the improvement to AoE healing and of course the 51pt holy talent. You get spirit but you miss all the cool end-tree talents from both of them.
   I would like to think that the mana regen to party and buff applying talents of the Discipline tree are finally going to be able to make Disc stand on his own for PVE but we will have to wait for the final numbers to be sure.

Factoring in Circle of Healing which is instant and heals multiple targets this could get a lot more interesting(making easier healing the raid on heavy AoE damage situations like Naj and Illidan). Believe it or not, it also kinda helps for MT healing to prevent heavy spikes.

Only time will tell though

Edit: Grammar

 

Ellyh

A very good point, so in that vein I will say that unless it is a probable effect that the concept while interesting lacks power. If it is guarenteed or close to guarenteed it is a useful ability but if they keep the chance to happen low it is very underpowered. The reason for this is that you have already scored a crit on the endangered target which should in itself bring the target out of the immediate danger zone. Also on a philosophical level on "Oh Crap" ability that relies on chance is a very very bad design as it removes any skill from the usage of the ability and turns it into a game of Russian roulette.

 

flyingtoastr

Welcome to the life of a paladin.

On that note though, it is mildly interesting to me that they are adding in crit to priest and druid healing trees. Crit used to be the big thing for holy pallys, making us the "spikey" healer, but it seems that they're spreading the love to the other healing classes. Its too early to speculate, but this could be a sign that they're going to homogenize the healers more, perhaps in an effort to make all four viable at multiple jobs (instead of the pigeonholing we have going on now with Shamans only raid healing and pallys only tank healing, etc).

On another tangent, with the (new) Improved Spirit Tap and change to Shadow Power would having crit be worth slightly more for Shadow Priests now? Combined with the Healing > Spell Damage talent could this lead to spell crit being itemized strongly on healing priest gear?

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Troffel

My impression from the warlock talents is, that dots are able to crit?

Can some one confirm this?

 

PsyBomb

Ellyh, I don't think we're reading the Test of Faith talent the same way. You're saying that the bonus chance applies any time the target is under 50%, but the bonus heal only on crits. I don't think that's what the talent does.

The crit chance amp is there any time they're under 50%, true, but the +heal bonus is also there whether or not you crit. This makes the talent particularly powerful for any boss fight where there is a lot of spike damage. That, and on Protadins.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Doctah

Personally I'm pondering if there might actually be a use for holy nova *gasp* now. With Persecution giving x% chance to incapacitate on holy damage there might be some scenarios where rank 1 spam just for the effect could be worth it, granted I can't think of any right now sigh.

Divine Aegis doesn't look too shabby either, assuming Gheal crits for ~9k (probably higher by lvl 80) thats a 2700 dmg shield every 15 seconds roughly at 14% crit, or 180 shielded/sec which is worth around 630 +healing :o. Sorry I know shouldn't talk numbers and theres a lot of assumptions in there but damn it looks sexy.

 

Rayeth

I see this as more of a function of homogenizing DPS caster stats. See Warlocks getting uses for Spirit, Mages getting better use for Crit. I suppose as a side effect there might be more crit placed on healing preist gear, but I don't think you'll find many priests looking to increase their crit rate even after all the changes. I suppose it will all come down to how the itemiziation falls out. A great piece could be ruined by stacking all its points in crit that no one really wants, but this is nothing new.

 

flyingtoastr

Oh, just saw something interesting on the wiki page as well.

Resilience - Resilience will no longer function inside of instances. Only if you are flagged PVP in the real world, BG's, and Arenas

Nerfing resil's anti-drain/DoT mechanics so it can't be abused in a few encounters perhaps?

Divine Favor still costs mana.

 

Flamingcloud

I got the impression that the 5 second rule was gone.(2 warlock +spirit% talents). .. But who knows mediation is still in so that can't be the case, still there has to be some form of spirit change, atleast for warlocks..

With the emphasis on corruption, I do have the feeling there is some form of dot mechanic change as well. Maybe haste scaling, maybe crits.

Seems more like a nerf to druids tanking in pvp gear.

 

Dioneirra

Well, let's try this. A take on the actual druidic changes from the viewpoint of a raiding moonkin.

Positive Bits:

- interesting idea with Master Shapeshifter similar to the warlock demonolgy talent, but unsure if this wouldn't mean a set 12 points in resto for every single spec -> again splitted point enforcment for min/maxing
- Imp Moonkin with additional effects, often asked for, in this version (depending on internal CD) maybe even in need of rebalance
- Natures Fury really is strong, and offering the much asked for nature magic buff; my top candidate for a lot of rebalancing

Neutral Bits:

- threat reduction splitted between Balance and Resto; while this will appease some critics i'm afraid it will create new ones
- Imp Fearie Fire offering spellhit -> while this was often asked for i'm still not sure about the tree placement and real reward (besides raiding) of this talent
- Brambles offering an increase in damage for the Force of Nature Trees is nice, the daze effect of trees and thorns on the other side are silly; daze was already skipped as an readily available mechanism at the beginning of BC
- Owlkin Frenzy somehow seems like a attempt to improve PvP viability to me, really difficult to judge
- the same could be said about Eclipse, but i think, this one is the worse, changing spells in reaction to effects have never worked til now (NG Procs as a famous example)
- Typhoon could be fun. Or not. Impossible to tell without playing it out. But if it is a random effect, it would somehow suit my view of druidic playstyle
- Starfall... well, somehow it's scream 'will look really cool', but on the other hand it screams 'breaks every CC on the screen at the same time'. I hope they did think of that,

Negative Bits:

- lower tier balance tree is still overloaded, there is still the need to pick 'useless' talents in order to advance to other tiers
- the nearly useless melee mana regen is still there
- Gale Wind in it's actual form looks like a 'lets put all leftover stuff in a talent'

 

impossible!

Almost certainly. It's also further polarizes the PvP and PvE games.

Though, I'm curious of the implications of that change on Feral tanks. Don't druids rely on some amount of resilience because of itemization? Or, is that only at a low tier of raiding?

 

Mu

Operating under the assumption that these leaked talents don't change, druids are getting an ability (defense curl) that boosts agility by 40% when you're crit. Since enrage and natural perfection can proc off mob abilities that don't crit when you have resilience it would stand to reason defense curl could too, I guess they don't want that happening.

Also, looking at the new feral tree survival of the fittest is being raised to 6%, which would effectively make druids crit immune without having to get resilience/defense. Right now I'm forced to use resilience gems just to stay uncrittable so the resilience change would hurt me a lot if SOTF stayed at 3%.

 

Copernicus

The talents seem to be designed around the idea of making stats/items more useful across specs. The +20% armor for druids could mean more reliance on regular gear instead of +armor tanking stuff. The -6% on Survival of the Fittest eliminates the need for defense/resilience while tanking. Moonkin and Shadow Priests are talking about how the conversion of +healing -> +damage might make a piece of healing gear the same +dmg as a regular piece of +dmg gear.

If I recall correctly, they tried to do the same thing during the TBC Alpha/Beta. It also looks like the insane +hit% talents are reduced (Suppression, Arcane Focus, Shadow Focus). I suspect that one reason we haven't seen Paladin/Shaman talents is that they're still deciding how to break down the three roles into two gear-options.

 

oldmandennis

Not really - you are doing the math wrong. For example, the KJ caster cloth head has 75 damage, and the healer one has 47 from the spell damage conversion, and you could add 15% to get a total of 58 damage. Damage items will be better... I guess maybe if they do a stable of talent respecs you could use some of your healing gear when you respec to go farming?

Not really. A 23 spell power enchant is pretty close to that.

 

PsyBomb

Taking a look at the Mage talents...

is it just me, or does it look like you can now actually justify sinking 55+ points into Arcane? Depending on how the spells work out, it's possible that we'll see the grand return of Arcane DPS. The new instant-cast at 51 beautifully links cast rotations together, plus the ability to just randomly toss in a fireball from a clearcast or Netherwind Presence proc gives me shivers. I'm looking at 53/15/3 atm, and it looks tasty

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

• Adoriele

Master Shapeshifter's a nice touch, gives us a reason to get Natural Shapeshifter other than that Nature's Focus and Subtlety don't help anymore. Imp Moonkin is a nice touch, allowing us to gain similar utililty to iLotP, but without encroaching on Spriest territory. I'd expect to see the haste proc lowered, though. Nature's Fury is no more unbalanced than CoS/E, and brings us a touch closer to being able to match a true DPS caster class.

Threat reduction needed to be split, if only so that we wouldn't need to sink into resto so far. It's 2 points for us now instead of 5, and we only need 15 in Resto instead of 18 (which we would still need if the -threat talents were linked). iFF is amazing now, and there's no reason not to get it. They're solving the complaint we had before where we were required to get a talent in order to get a raid spot, but that talent had absolutely no benefit for us. And it's a raiding talent. Don't want it for PvP? Spec differently. Brambles finally gets enough benefit to become a worthwhile raid talent, rather than just filler. Speaking of which, there's much less filler in the bottom now, not more. Other than a single point before hitting tier 3, it's possible to spec completely for raid DPS/utility. Eclipse will have to be heavily theorycrafted to determine if it's worth the points. Probably a PvP talent, but it could end up giving good reason to weave spells. Owlkin Frenzy and Typhoon scream PvP, but hey, Arena Moonkin need some love, too. Starfall, well... That will be interesting. It says it lasts 10s. Does that mean it's channeled?

And personally, I don't think melee mana regen will go away. They've had ample opportunity to do so, and if they did, they probably wouldn't replace it with anything. It's not hurting the spec, so there's no reason not to just let it be.

 

impossible!

Yup. I had this realization when I brought the two aforementioned changes up in conversation. I'm embarrassed to have thought about these changes with the current game in mind.

It's basically the best change they could make. Less non-set items due to the cross-class appeal makes for smaller, more efficient, less fuck-you-able loot tables. It also makes for a more steady and reliable progression of character; a contrast to what we're seeing in certain cases (e.g. Frozen Shadowweave and Shadow Priest).

I personally have no idea how they intend to bring shamans and paladins into the fold. Even druids, in two out of three cases. Things like healing plate and spell damage leather are single application. Ugh. What a freakin' problem. I wouldn't even know where to start.

 

Cranberry

Is anyone else listening to the login screen music on loop? God it's beautiful.

EDIT: Hot Streak seems like it might make +crit scale very well for deep fire. Anyone crunched the numbers on it?

 

tiberion02

Haha, yes I've had the 9 minute clip basically looping in the backround all day. Just downloaded the other 2hours of music out there (ambient zone music, etc) and its also very well down. It gives me the chills.

 

◊ Scorponok

Is it me, or is Burnout a pretty silly talent for fire mages? The basic idea is "You do more crit damage, but criticals cost you more mana." The Master of Elements talent refunds you mana whenever you get a crit. Does it make sense to have two talents that do the opposite of each other?

 

Cranberry

Can I get a link to that?

 

Liebestod

According to some SSs floating around, it looks like they might be mirroring AV by turning the Horde side into a mirrored Alliance side, only with Horde buildings. Maybe:

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/9554/alteraczu0.jpg

Which is a shame, I like the Horde side more..

Also, it looks like they're adding docks to SW as well (making a new area behind the Cathedral), presumably for easier transportation. That's nice.

Also looks like Ulduar is going to have 3 wings (one raid) according to the zonelist.

 

Grizlor

I don't even want to think about what's going to happen to plate gear if they focus on moving towards this, but if it alleviates situations like us getting 2 paladin healing belts every week between Azgalor and Gorefiend, I'm all for it. It certainly will be interesting to see what they make death knights spells scale off of, since they just went through great lengths to remove any and all spell damage dps plate. Death Knights couldn't even really use prot paladin gear, since while it has spell damage, it usually has some sort of focus on block value/rating.