m (Reverted edit(s) by CoeurDeLapin (talk) to last version by Gordon Ecker) |
Sporeboy83@legacy41573550 (talk | contribs) (added cata update banner) |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| + | {{Cataclysm/Update}} |
||
{{classnav}} |
{{classnav}} |
||
A '''talent''' is an additional [[class]]-specific [[ability]] or [[power]] that requires talent points to gain or improve. Each class has three [[Talent Tree]]s to choose from. |
A '''talent''' is an additional [[class]]-specific [[ability]] or [[power]] that requires talent points to gain or improve. Each class has three [[Talent Tree]]s to choose from. |
||
Revision as of 01:06, 28 September 2010
Template:Cataclysm/Update
| Classes | 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Class races | DK | DH | Dr | Ev | Hu | Ma | Mo | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Quests | DK | DH | Dr | Ev | Hu | Ma | Mo | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Abilities | DK | DH | Dr | Ev | Hu | Ma | Mo | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Trainers | DK | DH | Dr | - | Hu | Ma | Mo | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Armor sets | DK | DH | Dr | Ev | Hu | Ma | Mo | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Useful macros | DK | DH | Dr | - | Hu | Ma | Mo | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
| Class Halls | DK | DH | Dr | - | Hu | Ma | Mo | Pa | Pr | Ro | Sh | Wl | Wr |
A talent is an additional class-specific ability or power that requires talent points to gain or improve. Each class has three Talent Trees to choose from.
Basics
Personalizing your character is what separates each character of the same class. During the early Beta Test, the character Talent system was very rough and Blizzard went back to the drawing board to make the system more intuitive by adding prerequisites to the Talent system. If you have played the Diablo series of games you'll be more than familiar with the idea of a skill tree and this is the new system Blizzard has employed for World of Warcraft's Talent point assignment.
Why have Talents?
As you play the game and your character levels up, starting at level 10, your character is given 1 talent point (TP) every level to assign to their Talent trees. Each class has different trees and different Talents. The reason talents are included is so that each player of the same class will be slightly different as far as how their skills work and how effective they are. Talents are gained through level progression. Certain talents for your class are beneficial while you are leveling, other talents help you do better in PvP. Without this system each class character would be identical, which doesn't exactly add variety to the gamespace. It's up to you as the player how to make your character different by specializing in the character's different Talents.
How does the Talent system work?
With the maximum character level set at 80, a player can effectively assign a maximum of 71 talent points to their tree (leveling from 10 to 80 gives 71 points). Attaining a certain Talent's ability to augment your character is not as simple as just assigning 1 single point into a Talent.
For example, to activate and utilize a Talent in the second tier of the tree, you may have to assign 5 of your TPs into a Talent in the top tier prerequisites before it becomes active. Because the system is tiered, players have to think long and hard before assigning a point. Once you have allocated a TP, you cannot unallocate it. However, there will be NPCs available in some of the larger cities to allow players to reassign all their Talents, for a price, of course. This price will increase every time you reassign your Talents.
While planning one's talent build, take note that the ultimate talent in each of the Talent Trees require 50 Talent Points placed in that tree to unlock. This means that to learn the ultimate Talent in a tree, you need to place at least 51 points in that tree (attained at level 60). This prevents you from learning the ultimate Talent from either of the other 2 trees because you will only have a maximum of 71 Talent Points. With a few exceptions, the ultimate talent is very strong, and every character should have one.
Each character class features three Talent Trees, each unique to the class. You may want to specialize in one tree or spread your points over two or even three trees. Spreading your points will mean that it would be impossible for you to become efficient in one single Talent discipline - the choice is yours.
- Often there are Talents in one tree that will provide useful benefits to another tree (such as the Elemental Precision talent in the Mage's Frost tree, which would benefit both a Mage speccing for Fire and a Mage speccing for Frost). It is often useful to place Talent Points in multiple trees in order to further enhance your desired spec.
Where do I assign Talent Points?
There are a couple of ways to activate your Talent screen. One method is to click the Talent icon on the interface bar at the bottom of the screen (assuming you are using the default UI). This pops up the Talent interface which features the main Talent window showing the tree and Talents. It also features three tabs along the bottom which can be clicked to flip between each of the three trees. You can also activate the Talent interface by pressing the N key (if you haven't unbound it or bound the key to a different action).
What if I choose the wrong Talents?
Don't panic! Players have the ability to unlearn all their talents and start over. Your Class Trainer, for a modest fee (increases by 5
each use, to a maximum 50, however the first time you do this you will only be charged 1, a freebie of sorts), will let you recover all Talent Points spent up to this point. You can then reassign all your points. Keep in mind that all points are removed from ALL trees, and you'll also unlearn higher ranks of the spells achieved through a talent point expenditure. Fortunately, as of patch 2.4 you will automatically relearn the ranks of these spells as soon as you put talent points back into them.
You can avoid accidentally clicking the wrong talent by enabling talent confirmation. This is an option in the Features tab of the options pane.
Since patch 1.11 there is a decay in the cost of such talent respecs:
- The cost to unlearn talents will now decay over time. This cost will be reduced by a rate of 5 gold per month to a minimum of 10 gold.
Note: Although the official patch notes continue to say that the minimum is 10, subsequent official posts on the WoW forums have confirmed that that is a mistake, and the cost will only be reduced to a minimum of 15.
Occasionally, Blizzard will restructure a class's talent tree. If the change is significant, they may reset that class's tree, allowing you to respec for free. Talent changes do not always give a free respec: for example, in patch 2.3.2, the mage spell 
[Ice Block] was made trainable, and the talent 
[Cold Snap] was moved to its place, and the new spell 
[Icy Veins] was put in Cold Snap's old spot. This change did not give mages a free respec, but it required those mages specced for Ice Block to go to a trainer and buy that spell.
Prior to every Expansion, Blizzard has and will reset the talent tree incase the player wished to change before the new expansion.
Advice on picking your talents
- Pick one thing to do and stick with it. If you try to (for example) get a bit of healing ability and a bit of tanking ability, you'll probably end up bad at both.
- This does NOT mean you should definitely put all your points in one tree. Once you get the "ultimate talent" at 50 points, look at your other trees. Consider this a very strong, well-founded suggestion as the base talents in many trees work well with the advanced talents in other trees. That's not to say, however, that a Mage who puts all 71 points into Frost is automatically an easy target in PvP. In the hands of a skilled player, a 71-point single tree build can be very effective.
- Any ability that activates "whenever you are critically hit" is a PvP talent (PvE players won't get critically hit much) and can be safely skipped if you aren't doing much PvP.
- Any ability that gradually applies several stacks of a buff or debuff is designed for boss fights, which last long enough for these abilities to reach a full stack. When you're leveling, your fights usually won't last long enough, so skip these talents if there's something better available.
- Any talent that decreases threat caused by your abilities is obviously a PvE talent, designed for group situations such as instances. They are not recommended whatsoever for PvP play, and are completely unnecessary in that area.
- Any talent that makes you go faster in terms of movement (or mount) speed will save you a tremendous amount of time and is almost always worth getting while leveling.
- When leveling on a PvP realm, it is entirely understandable if you choose to create a versatile spec that allows you to perform decently enough in PvE but also gives you a boost in PvP capability in cases where you have to defend yourself from players of the opposing faction. In this case, this is a healthy alternative to focusing your talent build entirely on PvE or PvP.
- After purchasing Dual Talent Specialization, most players usually opt to have one raiding build and one PvP build.
- There's no such thing as a bad spec (except in very few cases). That's still no excuse to bring your PvP spec into an end-game raid, however. Please be aware of the strengths (and purpose) of your talent build, and utilize them accordingly.
- If you see someone else saying that only certain talent builds are acceptable, pay no attention to him/her. Talents were implemented so that players could further customize their characters. Five Mages from the same guild having the exact same talent build because they were told to is not customization. Choose the talents that work best with your play-style, but do be mindful of which talents you end up choosing. Again, choose the talents that work best with your play-style and you will become stronger.
- If you're having problems being accepted due to your talent build (which shouldn't happen, but sometimes it can), purchase Dual Talent Specialization. Now you can have both a cookie-cutter build and your own customized build, and you can switch between them any time you wish. Problem solved!
Pet talent points
- Main article: Pet talents
In patch 3.0.2, hunter pets went from having to be taught abilities using training points to having a talent tree, depending on the beasts' family type. Unlike players the pets start earning talent points at level 20 and then gain a point every 4 levels. So by the time your hunter reaches level 80, the pet will have 16 spendable points, unless the hunter has the Beast Mastery talent, which adds 4 more points.
Talent calculators
- Official Blizzard's: WoW Talent Calculator
Planned Cataclysm changes
Template:Cataclysm
 |
Not yet implemented!
|
Cataclysm Class & Mastery Systems Update | 2010-07-07 15:58 | 
Zarhym
- Talent Tree Vision
One of the basic tenets of Blizzard game design is that of “concentrated coolness.” We’d rather have a simpler design with a lot of depth, than a complicated but shallow design. The goal for Cataclysm remains to remove a lot of the passive (or lame) talents, but we don’t think that’s possible with the current tree size. To resolve this, we're reducing each tree to 31-point talents. With this reduction in tree size we need to make sure they're being purchased along a similar leveling curve, and therefore will also be reducing the number of total talent points and the speed at which they're awarded during the leveling process.
As a result, we can keep the unique talents in each tree, particularly those which provide new spells, abilities or mechanics. We’ll still have room for extra flavorful talents and room for player customization, but we can trim a great deal of fat from each tree. The idea isn’t to give players fewer choices, but to make those choices feel more meaningful. Your rotations won’t change and you won’t lose any cool talents. What will change are all of the filler talents you had to pick up to get to the next fun talent, as well as most talents that required 5 of your hard-earned points.
We are also taking a hard look at many of the mandatory PvP talents, such as spell pushback or mechanic duration reductions. While there will always be PvP vs. PvE builds, we’d like for the difference to be less extreme, so that players don’t feel like they necessarily need to spend their second talent specialization on a PvP build.
- The Rise of Specialization
We want to focus the talent trees towards your chosen style of gameplay right away. That first point you spend in a tree should be very meaningful. If you choose Enhancement, we want you to feel like an Enhancement shaman right away, not thirty talent points later. When talent trees are unlocked at level 10, you will be asked to choose your specialization (e.g. whether you want to be an Arms, Fury or Protection warrior) before spending that first point. Making this choice comes with certain benefits, including whatever passive bonuses you need to be effective in that role, and a signature ability that used to be buried deeper in the talent trees. These abilities and bonuses are only available by specializing in a specific tree. Each tree awards its own unique active ability and passives when chosen. The passive bonuses range from flat percentage increases, like a 20% increase to Fire damage for Fire mages or spell range increases for casters, to more interesting passives such as the passive rage regeneration of the former Anger Management talent for Arms warriors, Dual-Wield Specialization for Fury warriors and Combat rogues, or the ability to dual-wield itself for Enhancement shaman.
The initial talent tree selection unlocks active abilities that are core to the chosen role. Our goal is to choose abilities that let the specializations come into their own much earlier than was possible when a specialization-defining talent had to be buried deep enough that other talent trees couldn’t access them. For example, having Lava Lash and Dual-Wield right away lets an Enhancement shaman feel like an Enhancement shaman. Other role-defining examples of abilities players can now get for free at level 10 include Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, Mutilate, Shadow Step, Thunderstorm, Earth Shield, Water Elemental, and Penance.
- Getting Down to the Grit
Talent trees will have around 20 unique talents instead of today's (roughly) 30 talents, and aesthetically will look a bit more like the original World of Warcraft talent trees. The 31-point talents will generally be the same as the 51-point talents we already had planned for Cataclysm. A lot of the boring or extremely specialized talents have been removed, but we don't want to remove anything that’s going to affect spell/ability rotations. We want to keep overall damage, healing, and survivability roughly the same while providing a lot of the passive bonuses for free based on your specialization choice.
While leveling, you will get 1 talent point about every 2 levels (41 points total at level 85). Our goal is to alternate between gaining a new class spell or ability and gaining a talent point with each level. As another significant change, you will not be able to put points into a different talent tree until you have dedicated 31 talent points to your primary specialization. While leveling, this will be possible at 70. Picking a talent specialization should feel important. To that end, we want to make sure new players understand the significance of reaching the bottom of their specialization tree before gaining the option of spending points in the other trees. We intend to make sure dual-specialization and re-talenting function exactly as they do today so players do not feel locked into their specialization choice.
- A True Mastery
The original passive Mastery bonuses players were to receive according to how they spent points in each tree are being replaced by the automatic passive bonuses earned when a tree specialization is chosen. These passives are flat percentages and we no longer intend for them to scale with the number of talent points spent. The Mastery bonus that was unique to each tree will now be derived from the Mastery stat, found on high-level items, and Mastery will be a passive skill learned from class trainers around level 75. In most cases, the Mastery stats will be the same as the tree-unique bonuses we announced earlier this year. These stats can be improved by stacking Mastery Rating found on high-level items.
- To Recap
When players reach level 10, they are presented with basic information on the three specializations within their class and are asked to choose one. Then they spend their talent point. The other trees darken and are unavailable until 31 points are spent in the chosen tree. The character is awarded an active ability, and one or more passive bonuses unique to the tree they've chosen. As they gain levels, they'll alternate between receiving a talent point and gaining new skills. They'll have a 31-point tree to work down, with each talent being more integral and exciting than they have been in the past. Once they spend their 31'st point in the final talent (at level 70), the other trees open up and become available to allocate points into from then on. As characters move into the level 78+ areas in Cataclysm, they'll begin seeing items with a new stat, Mastery. Once they learn the Mastery skill from their class trainer they'll receive bonuses from the stat based on the tree they've specialized in.
We understand that these are significant changes and we still have details to solidify. We feel, however, that these changes better fulfill our original class design goals for Cataclysm, and we're confident that they will make for a better gameplay experience. Your constructive feedback is welcomed and appreciated.