I saw on the official boards a thread where someone linked to the talent builds for the original World of Warcraft beta. I'm linking the oldest ones for each class available


Druid:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie..._id=8&build=b5

Warrior:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie..._id=5&build=b4

Mage:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie..._id=4&build=b4

Priest:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie..._id=6&build=b4

Shaman:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie..._id=8&build=b5

Rogue:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie..._id=7&build=b4

Warlock:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie...id=10&build=b6

Hunter:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie...y_select_id=11

Paladin:
http://wowvault.ign.com/View.php?vie...y_select_id=12


Quite possibly the most interesting is the warrior one as it was the first one designed (alongside mages) and it shows the changes that have been made to the philosophies. Prerequisites are often haphazardly placed. New abilities were placed as 16 point talents, 26 point talents and then maybe another at 31. Improved heroic strike is required if you want to get improved rend. You had to spend three total points in improved shield block in order to pick up improved shield bash which gave it +20% chance to hit. I don't know what they think you'd be fighting where you'd need +20% chance to hit with a special. Most impressively, improved disarm was actually weakened from the beta tree to the current tree, giving half the return.

In the fury tree, you get an amazing return with your first 15 points picking up cruelty, flurry, and enrage. There's then a lot of filler. At the end of the tree you see their old philosophy. They didn't want to confuse new players and allow them to improve an ability through talents before they obtained them, so all of the talents that improved abilities that required you to be level 30 for berserker stance required you to place 30 points in the tree first. (You could get your first talent point at level 2 originally). The same applied to a few other talents for other classes, like improved grace of air totem and improved spellstone.


In other cases it's just impressive how much they've condensed some of the talents. For example, if a druid wanted 5-6% feral critical strike chance, critical strikes with abilities to give combo points or rage, 10% additional armor in forms, and increased base attack power in cat, it would take a beta (or earlier retail) druid 25 talent points to do so. In the expansion, the same talents (some now even more effective) cost a total of 11 points.

There are a few talents that were removed which it would actually be nice to have back. For example, priests had a talent that let more of their spirit regeneration work after a critical spell strike, and they'd also love to have a combat res. I know some hunters still miss the old spirit bond.

Overall it's impressive how far they've come and amusing to try to figure out what the hell they were thinking in other cases.

edit: added older rogue build

I love that Ruin used to be called "Holocaust."

What's also interesting is just how long it took some of those talents to change. Imp Sunder Armor for warriors was still reducing armor, not rage cost, when the game went live.

So I think it's something to keep in mind for the future. I'd say we could expect to see a lot of talent changes yet still, as raid content is released. The law of unintended consequences has not yet fully played out for talents that we have.

Yeah okay ignore this post.

God, Purification as a first tier Shaman talent. I wish.

The warrior stuff looks a lot more Diablo-ish than the trees we see today. The Hunter and Paladin calcs for beta 4 are the best ;D

Warlocks not having a 3rd tree and Ruin being called Holocaust :blink:. Mage trees looks like a game of snakes and ladders. Ice block being a 31 talent makes a lot more sense than ice barrier though.

Combat Endurance?! Good god, man.

/sigh Shadow Strikes

:(

Spears :D

I want a spear :(

This was brocken as fuck. All I would do was spam lesser heal rank one and wait for the proc. I remeber (when the level cap was 55) my little perma group tank getting the +healing hammer from brd (since back then, +healking work for heals ON you, not heals done) so this would be even more effective. Other healers would complain about going OOM on the emperor while I would end the fight at 90% mana every time.

I find it funny that the SM / Ruin (or would it be SM / Holocaust) spec is basically untouched.

Also lacerate makes me laugh everytime I see it, in any context.

I have a ton of hunter pvp videos by a guy named Clovian. He was 31 BM 20 Marks i think. Those movies introduced me to so much (I was still noobing it up on my lvl 30 pally at the time). Every time i watched it I was amazed at how much healing he got from spirit bond with his broken tooth (40 health from a cat hitting for 1.0 atk speed, or down to 0.7 from that talent... lordy). I also remember drooling over his DM blues.

heh holocaust. Not hard to gues why they changed the name to ruin :D

also the warrior 41 prot talent was funny^^ spirit eh?

Sorry for being dense, but is there a way to see beta 4 talents on that site? I only see beta build 8.

Things that woulda been awesome: Combat talented rez for priests, and Master Healer; for hunters the old spirit bond and barrage only a third teir ability.

Things I don't miss: Divine Spirit, holy nova as 31 pt talents for priests, and the old survival tree.

I definitely agree. There are many cases where I think, how the heck did they come up with that? (Improved smite, etc.) And then other times I think, why on earth did they take that away?

The other interesting thing is to look at some trees that haven't been changed hardly at all, like the priest shadow tree. Seems they got it right the first time, which is not really surprising.

WoW, look at Arcane Meditation, improves your mana regeneration rate by 25% flat out! WOW bring that back imo.

Uh...huh...

Depends on which class you're looking at. Priests have beta 4 build.

Hunters and Paladins were the last ones to get their trees. Hitting the talent window back in the first stress test brought up a window that said "You have no talent" or something to that effect.

The classes got their talents two at a time, first Warriors/Mages, then Rogues/Priests, I'm not sure in what order the classes followed after that, but I distinctly remember a period where the above completely dominated the game over the non-talented classes.

I remember that Holocaust was changed because there was a bunch of complaing on the old battle.net forums from waaaay back

It was definitely a talent that people knew needed changing right away in terms of wording. At the risk of Godwinning this thread up, I would note that I still think it is a bit of a shame. The word holocaust was around a long time prior to The Holocaust after all and has a meaning of its own.

Thanks for bringing these up though BEEF, I haven't seen them in ages and it's amazing how one's memory clouds things. I sure don't remember the initial Mage talents seeming that bad at the time!

Interesting to see that the shaman talents are largely the same as they were before the shaman talent review, lends some truth to the devs saying that they felt shaman were a mostly-completed class.

Edit - shaman had Rebirth though? What did druids have then?
Edit2 - oops nvm now I see that they had Reincarnation. Boy that seems silly now.