First and foremost, I am not opposed to the idea they're going with in swapping to a 31 talent centric tree design where talent points should do more, since they'll be fewer of them available to us. I like the idea of giving the classes certain talents etc. immediately at level 10 as it makes level 10 feel like you're really starting to play your class....
My biggest concern, though is for those of us who are already at level 80 and who are facing a grind up to 85.
consider this: Here is my current Fury Talent Selection, and Here is my interpretation of that in the Cataclysm Talent tree. Now, here's what concerns me so far, that I hope gets addressed. My current level is 80, and to get 'the same abilities from talents that I have now' I'll have to get to 85.
Ok, this makes no sense. The reward for getting to 85 is that we can finally have back the same abilities we have now? I think one of two solutions needed to be added globally to every tree, in much the same way that I see this problem in the warrior trees:
1) if you copy and paste a talent from the current talent tree (no matter where it is) and place it into the Cataclysm talent tree, it should have about 1/2 the cost (see Cruelty, Flurry, Bloodsurge). It should not have the same cost, with no extra effects (see Armored to the Teeth, Impale, Deep Wounds, Intensify Rage, etc.). The cost can be rounded up, in the case of 1 point talents, for instance, but in some cases, maybe the 1 point talents should be considered as trainable instead of taking up a position on the tree. Especially if, like Piercing Howl, they've come to be associated indelibly with a warrior attempting to do exactly what this expansion is purporting to attempt to have us remember how to do, and kite things and cc them instead of just wail on them. Basically, I'd just like Blizz to think of this like a currency exchange. You want to make "Clysm-Talent Points" that spend almost like 2 "Wrath-Talent Points." And the goods we're buying shouldn't end up seeming like a bad deal after the exchange.
2) If you don't want to make the talent point cost of an ability less than it is now, but you still like the effect, then increase the effect to make it worthwhile. For example, let's look at Armored to the Teeth. Admittedly, a great talent, arguably an important one to take. The only advantage that it has over the other version of Armored to the Teeth is that Blizzard has already upped the coefficient from where it was originally (requiring 3 talent points but not getting to the level it is at now). If you consider where AttT was "pre" Lich King buffs and where it will be in Clysm, this is a good example of a way that you can make a talent cost the same but still be worthwhile. Unfortunately since the buff happened mid Wrath, at this point warriors have come to expect this level of AttT as a normal version, and won't be happy with less. As a better example, look at the changes to Improved Execute. I love that instead of making the cost less, Blizzard is making it hit harder. As long as the numbers on Execute live up to what I've been hearing (Execute supposedly hits much harder now than it did) I think this could save Execute from being Heroically Stricken from our toolbar. This is a talent that was performed correctly. They wanted to keep it a 2 point talent, so they "engineered" the effect to make it more worthy of those 2 "Clysm-Talent" points (which are actually equal to about 3.7 Wrath Talent points, but close enough to double).
3) If you don't like option 1 or 2 for a talent, then go with option 3, get rid of that talent and design something fresh and interesting to take it's place. Look at deep wounds. Ok, so maybe the devs don't like having that talent be "stronger" than it already is, but for fury warriors, who can't easily rend in their rotations, deep wounds IS our dot. It's the ONLY dot we have. We pretty much HAVE to take that talent, we have no choice. Impale is pretty much the only "optional" talent of those two, and even there, it has been a pretty important addition to our dps. Now, notice, Deep wounds is EXACTLY the same, but costs now nearly twice as many talent points. Impale is actually WORSE, because it provides the same boost as before, but only to "some" abilities instead of all of them. What's worse, the only ones in that list that will help Fury are Slam and Execute, both of which are situational and unpredictable sometimes. Execute may not be as spammable at end of battle as it is now once they normalize rage generation, and Slam is only useful when it's instant, as otherwise it delays our white swing timer. Both of these are nearly twice as expensive as they are now, but are not more valuable. This idea needs to be "relooked at" soon. As an example, if you absolutely must keep it like this, maybe change it around so that you make the first talent (the 3 point one) something like "Each critical hit will also cause an additional 20/40/60% of the original damage over the next 5 seconds." If it scales as crit damage, then it's suddenly worth more, and the 3 point expenditure seems justified. But still keeping with the lame 48% weapon damage just feels like a slap in the face. Similarly with Impale. If you want to "tame it down" to just 20% of some abilities, then tame down the price to 1 point, or redesign the talent to do something else, because clearly it isn't exciting enough to really consider if you can't do better than just copy and paste.
4) A final option that could be considered for some of this is to make sure in the talent tree you can essentially "re-create" the essence of each build currently available AT LEVEL 80 in the new tree AT LEVEL 80. Then, as we level up, we'd get new talent points that would actually be talent points we could put towards IMPROVING what we have now instead of just rebuilding it to what it was.
Ok, enough about what I don't like and what I'd like to see changed.
Here's what I do like:
(notice that a lot of it is along the lines of my suggestions earlier):
I love Fury in the Blood. This is an example of a newly designed talent that does what the talents in Clysm should do. It takes an already utility ability and makes it even better, turning it into an automatic cooldown we can pop, and so changing our gameplay a little to save these for those "crucial" moments, or popping them every chance we get on those dps race bosses.
I love Blood and Thunder. No, this doesn't fix the problem we have with streaming adds, but it sure as heck does address how we can deal with the AoE tanking issues we've been having. This way, we can place a dot on everyone in range immediately, so those mobs will stay more securely (short of dps being idiots) and as new adds stream in, we can use our taunts and other abilities to grab them, and once we TC again, we can cement those to us also. It will not be as easy mode as Paladins/DK's have it now, but it will certainly make it more of a joy than it is now.
I like Hold the Line. This has a great potential for making parry a more prioritized stat, and also adding threat generation as well as mitigation at the same time. I'm looking forward to using this.
I like the changes to Shield Mastery. Even though this is pretty much the same cost etc. the effect of now improving our cooldowns to be more in line with other tanks is much more desireable than the previous effect.
I love the change to Vigilance. This is one instance where I can definitely tell the devs listen to the community. We all said that one of our biggest problems as warriors was trying to off tank. When we don't have anyone wailing on us, how do we get rage? I also love that now the possibility of having two warrior tanks Vigilancing each other to mitigate damage and keep their taunt at the ready is now not a guessing game of concern over whether or not the threat transference will even out. I know some people are complaining about the loss of threat transfer, and while I will miss that somewhat, I'm hoping that the new threat mechanics will help to make up for that.
Now for my "I don't know"s:
I can't decide if I like Lambs to the Slaughter or not. On the one hand, I think having a proc coming from MS is a great idea, but having it happen and all that the proc does is lessen the swing timer on your next swing by 36% is not as cool as it could be. Mortal Strike now has a 5 second cooldown, so assuming that an arms warrior could keep that going every 5 seconds (2 gcd's in between, so maybe room for one Overpower, and/or one rend or slam) it would basically mean that every other white swing would take only 2/3 the time, so every 6 swings would generate one extra swing, so it's kind of like adding up to 16% haste (depending how often you can hit MS). One side of me likes the way they're trying to do that, because the feel of Arms is very reactionary, the other side wonders why they don't just make it something like "adds 16% melee haste for 5 seconds after using Mortal Strike" or some such.
I also can't decide how I feel about Field Dressing. On the one hand this sounds like a nice talent to have for PvP. On the other hand, I notice that it is pretty much the only other talent in tier 1 of the arms tree that a Fury warrior would be interested in, since rend is not planned to be usable in berserker stance still. So I find myself looking at this as a Fury or Arms warrior. First of all, Arms doesn't get Bloothirst, where the majority of our self healing comes from. They can, however, make it up to Blood Craze which has been modified to proc off any damage done, but an extra 20% on that is pretty miniscule, especially since that is only a 10% chance to proc. So, really, the only good Arms gets from it is from Enraged Regeneration. Fury might get some good from it, but if they're doing what they should be doing, they shouldn't be caring too much about the self healing they're getting from Bloodthirst (which is nowhere near what a blood DK does now) and won't really be getting a significant amount from any Blood Craze points they've taken either. In many ways this feels to me like a mandatory talent for protection warriors trying to take some arms talents and not much else. If that's the case, though, what are DPS warriors supposed to take to get to Deep Wounds, which, as I've said, will still be pretty much a mandatory talent group for us as dps?
There are several others that I could go on about the changes, some subtle, some not so subtle, but for the most part I think the majority of what is left falls into either a "I'll have to wait and see how it goes" category, or into one of the four "Blizz please re-think this" categories I mentioned earlier.
Next time I'll discuss the DK trees.
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