Quote from: Blizzard (Source) The points will work this way It's possible you will only get the benefit of the tree in which you've spent the most points, or will only get the benefit from say 50 points maximum with the bonus chosen from the tree with the most points in it. We'll have to see when the talent trees are more finalized and we start to figure out build strategies. Overall, the goal is to spend points as you want, and not feel penalized for spending into another tree or feel like you have to game things by spending more points than you want in your tree. Remember these passive bonuses are designed to give you flexibility, not lock you into anything. About hybrid builds Imagine you spend 55 points in Retribution, so you get the maximum passive talent tree bonuses from that tree. Your remaining points you can spend where you want, in Retribution, Protection or Holy. It does discourage some kind of true hybrid build where you go partway down multiple trees, but we aren't really trying to support those, and they aren't very popular today. The flexibility comes (hopefully) in having more discretionary points that you can spend on talents you like, rather than sacrificing raw damage, healing or tanking to do so. So you're getting rid of stats like Defence and ArP because they're a bit too mathy and hard to figure out, and replacing it with something equally confusing? How do you expect new players to figure this out? It's designed partially with new players in mind. It will be much harder to have a truly terrible talent spec because you won't be able to help but be reasonably good at your chosen role. The mastery stat itself won't show up until high level, and even when it does, you should have more confidence that it's a stat you want instead of say trying to figure out the percent of your damage that is physical damage to calculate if armor pen is good for you or not. I admit that adding passive bonuses at all to talent trees complicates the talent feature slightly. We hope to make up for that by there being less paranoia about picking "the wrong" spec. The wrong spec might only be a slight loss instead of a tragic loss. As a point of comparison, dual-spec complicates talents a little, but overall we think it was good for the game. Would the 'intended role' of disc be preventing damage? It almost feels as though the third disc bonus should be the first, and the third replaced by something similar to the divine aegis effect, where direct damage creates small shields. To answer your question -- and this applies to all classes. the first two mastery stats are gained by placing points into a given talent tree (and wearing the gear intended for your class, e.g. leather for druids). This will allow us to remove many of the talents that always felt mandatory, especially at the min-max level, and allow room for customization. Level 80 items won't have mastery stat on them Sorry we didn't make this more clear -- what this means is -- level 80 items from this expansion will not not include the mastery stat. However, once you enter the new end-game zones, you will slowly begin to find this stat on select gear. 28/28/20 spec. Does mastery on gear affect both highest trees or give no benefit at all? Mastery on gear gives you one bonus. That bonus is the third passive (the unique one) in the tree in which you've spent the most points. In the examples we gave, those are Absorption, Radiance and Runic Power generation. How are ferals and Dks as tanks working with mastery system in place? Are they to care about it for threat or do they have separate bonuses. Ferals will have passive bonuses that say Cat: melee damage done, Bear: damage reduction. For death knights we have a different plan in mind that we're not quite ready to discuss. DKs are undergoing some slight changes so they aren't so GCD constrained and are less limited by rune cooldowns. How are the non-pure classes going to be balanced against those with a full 76 point passive benefit? Balance, enhancement(not so much), shadow, feral, ele, resto, holy and Ret all have this issue. Assume you only get the passive bonuses for the tree in which you've spent the most points, and there is a ceiling per tree (which could be something like 51-55 talent points). If you spend more points than that in a tree you still get the benefits of the talent. If you spend points in another tree, you are benefiting from those talents instead. Unless you try to make say a 40 / 36 / 0 build, you shouldn't be losing passive bonuses. If you turn level 10 and spend 1 point in Discipline, you are now a Disc priest. You receive the Disc talent tree passive bonuses and mastery rating on gear benefits your Disc passive bonus (Absorption). If you reach level 85 and have 70 points in Disc and 6 in Holy, you are still a Disc priest and the same rules apply. If you change your build to 51 Disc / 20 Holy / 5 Shadow, you are still a Disc priest. Hybrids who use spells not improved by their spec on occasion such as heals or the extra lava burst are feeling that their non-specced spells are going to be extremely weak as compared to now. They are weak now and the intent is to keep them that way. We aren't trying to nerf them any more than they are today. If we want to make sure Resto shaman can do big Lava Bursts, we'll give them a talent or something to make that happen. We don't want Resto shaman to Lava Burst anywhere on the scale of an Elemental shaman. Again, how they perform today is pretty much the target for where we want to end up. About the DK rune mechanic I know it's hard to get a feel for the design when you can't see the complete picture, but talent trees are changing for Cataclysm. As Eyonix referenced above, we are changing the DK rune mechanic a little so that you aren't so GCD constrained. This in turn will give us a chance to rebalance how much runic power Frost gets. Remember that in many cases we are pulling talents out of the trees and giving them to you as passive bonuses. In general if you see a passive talent tree bonus and think to yourself "Hmm, that doesn't sound very good for me," then it's probably because we haven't revealed the changes that lead to that being attractive to you. By all means mention concerns though. That's one of the reasons we like to announce changes like this early. Won't having this ceiling pigeonhold "pure" classes into builds where putting points in a tree that go past the ceiling will be sub-optimal as you will be missing out on mastery from your sub trees, i.e. ending up with all builds being 51/24/0 and no builds being 61/14/0 because you just lost 10 points of mastery bonus? It's hard to set stuff like this in stone until we explore what kinds of builds will be popular, but assume that you don't get anything for the sub spec (except for the actual talents, which are presumably still valuable or you wouldn't be sub-speccing).
Zarhym on Community Interviews: Enigma (Source)We've updated World of Warcraft's five-year anniversary site to include a frank interview with Fraya, the leader of the Enigma guild on the Deathwing realm. In the interview, we speak with Fraya about his most memorable moments over five years of playing, Enigma's experience in high-end raiding, and where the guild expects to find itself in Cataclysm and beyond. Check out the anniversary page for our full discussion.http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wowanniversary/interview/While there, be sure to read our interviews with members from the guild Shadowclan, and with forum MVP Palehoof if you have not already!
