Hi there. Welcome to Critical QQ. This is a blog written by streams of QQ pouring down the face of a very sad person who plays WoW.
Prepare for QQ.
There will be a LOT of it in the following days.
First, a couple things Ghostcrawler has stated.
One. A tree is considered “bloated” if, after taking all of it’s mandatory DPS talents, it only has 2-3 points left to spend on random stuff, like utility and so forth.
Two. Any player can sacrifice small amounts of DPS in order to gain some utility. For instance, a frost mage can drop a point in Arctic Winds to pick up Deep Freeze.
These points are important, please remember them. There will be a test.
So then. Let’s take a look at some numbers, just tree by tree for now.
Arcane needs to spend a minimum of 53 talents in it’s home tree to pick up all the important DPS talents.
Fire needs to spend a minimum of 51 talent points, and you can make a very strong argument for 54.
Frost, too, needs to spend a minimum of 53 talent points.
So far, so good.
It’s when you put all three trees together that it all starts getting messy.
Let’s look at Hunters. Talent tree wise, Hunters are in an excellent position. Say you know a Marksman hunter. Now, that hunter has choices for his off tree.
He can go Beastmaster, pick up a talent to give him a haste proc, maybe another talent to boost his DPS by a percent or two. Maybe even go deep enough to boost the AP he gets from Aspect of the Hawk, or even tosses a few points into Unleashed Fury to boost his pets damage.
Or he could forsake a little damage to boost his pet’s survivability.
He could go to the Survival, invest in a talent that can grant him an extra 5% damage, grab some extra crit on Steady Shot and Arcane Shot, or screw the damage and get more range or stamina or even Scatter Shot.
Point is, he has the points to spend on sweet nothings, and he has many options available to decide between raw damage or more utility.
Arcane mages, too, fall into this same category. Grab some extra crit from the fire tree… or not, and spend those points elsewhere. Spend 11 points in the frost tree for extra hit and Icy Veins, or go a little deeper, spend 18 points and get a powerful mana reduction talent.
Or do neither, and spend more points into arcane to pick up some utility via Slow or Magic Absorption.
Basically, you spend around 51-53 points in your home tree, and then you can spend the rest wherever you deem fit without really gimping yourself.
Then along comes a talent like Torment the Weak. Three talent points for a 12% damage boost to your primary nukes. A truly huge DPS boost per talent point for the specs that use it.
Some talents are good. Arcane Concentration is good. Precision is good. Neither of them are mandatory. You wouldn’t be gimped if you didn’t have them. You’d be a little lower than you would’ve been if you had been minmaxing the crap out of your character, but you won’t be performing badly.
Not so with Torment the Weak. This talent is mandatory. A Fireball mage, arcane mage or a frost mage will be absolutely terrible without it.
To put it another way. Say you want to be a frost mage. Go to the trainer, pay a fee, and take a gander at your empty talent trees. Such a pity you only have 53 talent points to spend how you want.
See that number at the bottom? “71 points available”? That number is a lie. It should say 53, because you have to spend 18 points in arcane. You do not have a choice in the matter.
So you spec frost. You sink the 53 points into the frost tree you need for all your DPS talents. You put the 18 points in the arcane tree for TTW. How many points do you have left to spend on utility?
None. You don’t have any. You spent every talent point you had to get the mandatory DPS talents.
Fine, fine. I’ll give you that the first 15 points in the arcane tree don’t matter. You can spend those however you like. All fifteen of those points are, essentially, random utility points.
Except for the fact that they all have to be spent in the arcane tree.
Imagine a buffet. There are three tables overflowing with food. Your host tells you “You can eat anything you see before you. Anything at all. Except you can’t eat anything from the table on the right. Or the table in the middle, for that matter.”
You ask your host “Why? Why can’t I eat from those two tables?”
Your host looks around awkwardly, then takes off his hat, pulls a rabbit out of it and says “IT’S FUZZY!” then buffs warlocks.
A Fireball based spec is in the same situation. That spec also needs to get Torment the Weak. I’m sure a fireballin’ mage would love to get some hit from talents, maybe pick up Icy Veins, but he can’t. Ever. He’s not allowed.
I’ll be blunt. This isn’t good design.
But where else would the points go? Where else would a frost mage spend points besides the arcane tree? I mean, there’s nothing in the fire tree that’s at all appealing to frost mages.
I wonder who’s fault that is…
Within the frost tree itself, everything still works fine. A frost mage can lose a little DPS by lengthening the cooldown of Icy Veins, and pick up a Blizzard with a snare. Or drop a point from Winter’s Chill and nab Ice Barrier.
But he can’t ever, no matter how much he may want to, drop points from the arcane tree. Those 18 points are immovable.
The fix is easy.
What do you do when a talent tree is bloated? Cut down on the number of talent points required, of course. TTW requires the mage to spend 15 talent points to get to it. It isn’t exactly hard to bring that down to 10 or even 5, thus freeing up some more points for the mage to spend elsewhere.
“But… but what if Frostfire mages take it? Then they’ll be-”
What’s wrong with that? Put TTW right at the start of the fire tree. Let everyone have TTW. All arcane, frost, and fireball mages already have it in every conceivable build , it shouldn’t exactly be difficult to balance around it.
I mean, look at Ret Paladins on the PTR. When they take all their mandatory DPS talents, they have 14 points left to spend on whatever the hell they want.
Frost mages? Still zero.
How is that even an echo of an equitable state of affairs?
The thing is hunters have the same problem – in TBC, 20 points in Marksmanship were mandatory; today it’s only 14 or 15, but they are still mandatory
(but it is nice to have a few points to play with)
[...] the rest: Mandatory Talent Bloat Share and [...]
Very good general dissertation. GC has mentioned that he and others on staff read several of the well-known sites/forums/blogs, I do hope your blog is on their radar.
Some specific points regarding talent balance that I have noticed:
Lethal Shots: +5% crit, easily obtained by any non-MM hunter.
Malice: +5% crit, easily obtained by non-Assassination rogue.
Dual Wield Spec: +50% offhand damage, easily obtained any non-combat rogue.
Demonic Embrace: +10% stamina, easily obtained by any non-Demo warlock.
Cruelty: +5% crit, easily obtained by non-Fury warriors.
Armored to the Teeth: lots of bonus AP, easily obtained by non-Fury warriors.
These talents are all first tier talents that are very useful to any other tree looking to shop around a bit. Now consider the first tier mage trees.
First off, can we talk about what a cruel joke Improved Frostbolt/Fireball are? The appropriate 5-point talent is absolutely mandatory for fire and frost mages, and of zero use whatsoever to any mage not spec’ed down the corresponding tree.
And all three first tier arcane talents are utterly worthless to fire mages, and nearly worthless to frost mages. Arcane threat reduction? Whatever. Arcane hit? Whatever. Arcane pushback resist? Whatever.
(FWIW frost mages who need a mana dump can arcane focus & stability and weave arcane blasts between frostbolts and see a modest dps upgrade if they can manage to keep 3 stacks of AB debuffs up. I’ve tried this and it works but is very frustrating with FoF procs.)
The first tier mage talents seem an attempt to force mages to spec all talent points down one single tree. A design they break by putting useful talents in tier 2 (for fire), 3 or 4 (for arcane and frost).
It’s nutty. If you could work your magic to get GC to build Imp Fireball/Frostbolt into the base spells and then replace those talents with some generic talents, it’d be awesometacular.
I was going to bring up hunters, but its already been done, but yes.
every hunter must spend a minimum of 13 points in MM tree, preferably 14 (unless they ar not hit capped – then it becomes 17)
it doesn’t matter which spec you play.
as far as I know (at least from what I’ve been learning as I level my druid) – its somewhat similar with druids. regardless of spec you play – you need the omen of clarity from resto tree. that means – 11 of your points are spoken for, no matter what you decide to do.
then there’s shaman. whatever spec you end up playing – you will be taking Ansestral knowledge and thundering strikes and 2 to 3 points in elemental weapons
see where I’m going with this? it might be not as many points as the mages, but its the same idea
BLizzard seems to lean towards 2 trends.
1. there are tallents that you must take regardless of your chosen spec. they are mandatory and you can try to avoid them at your own risk.
2. and this is a more recent spec – hybrid specs are becoming completely and uterly unviable. BLizzard wants you to pick a tree, go deep into it and stick with it. every time someone finds a good viable hybrid spec (and got forbid, that spec is more viable then taking 51 point tallents) – devs come up with the ways to nerf it. they spend all that “effort” on designing 51 point tallens and they want you to take it, or else..
P.S. one doesn’t have to play a mage to QQ
Hmm. You make an excellent argument but I disagree with your conclusions. 12% boost for three points is massive (arguably well over budget) and should quite rightly require a certain investment to pick up. I can’t see it moving higher up the tree without being nerfed. By your own logic (mages forced to spec into it) it might very well even be pushed deeper into arcane to relieve you of that burden.
Now if you were arguing for better choices on your way up to grab TTW, I would nod and cheer and be right with you. I agree the first tiers of arcane are weak (clearcasting aside) but that’s a completely separate argument.
I know you kind of dismissed the FFB build getting it as not being a big deal, but shurely FFB would then need a nerf if TtW was so easy to get?
That said, it would be nice to either make some of these mandatory DPS moves more easily available, or at least make the points spent to reach them more appealing. Leah mentioned Druids having the same problem of needing to get Omen of clarity, but at least in getting there you can get some decent stuff from the Resto tree (Master Shapeshifter etc) – Aside from Clearcasting the rest of the first few Tiers of Arcane are very “meh”.
I actually play with the deep frost frostfire spec that the devs aren’t trying to help.
What is there in the fire tree that a frost spec might want, you ask? Impact and Burning Soul make my primary nuke very hard to interrupt. Impact also works on Blizzard, which helps since my frostbiting, FOF-proccing Blizzard volleys are very hard for tanks to handle. Master of Elements returns about as much mana as clearcasting would at my crit level. With seven extra points to spend in the shallow end of the Frost tree (no point in Imp Frostbolt, or Empowered Frost), I can actually spend points on just about anything I would want in the pre-40 range. AND you don’t have to ruin your primary nuke for solo/5-man content by removing its snare with that hurtful glyph.
All this in exchange for topping out at 2K DPS in Heroic gear. That’s a big limitation on paper, but it’s also the benchmark for heroic dungeon zergs, and it’s not like you can always count on a PUG tank to hold aggro over even that much DPS. Since I don’t raid, it’s a no brainer.
(Aside: If they do get around to redesigning Impact, and do NOT add Frostfire Bolt to the talent that gives replenishment, this little spec will be dead. I won’t be able to justify the DPS numbers to myself if I’m not even able to provide replenishment for the group.)
Back onto the initial topic, I wouldn’t complain about moving TTW to the fire tree, but bear in mind that doing so would kill the ABarr + Frost Channeling build.
Why not scrap the idea of tiered talent trees altogether?
You have 71 points to spend across the three talent trees and can put them anywhere you like.
Sounds a better solution to me. You can cherry pick talents out of each tree that will suit you and cut the dross.
As you’ve stated, siply to get to TTW you need to spend 15 talent points in areas you don’t ‘need’.
If being able to spend talent points anywhere you choose on a tree makes people too powerful, reduce the number of points you have…1 point per two xp levels would be reasonable I’d suggest.
At level 80 you’d have 40 points to spend, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but given that you wouldn’t have to take any ‘filler’ talents should be about right.
The whole point is that Blizz doesn’t want you to just take DPS talents. Changing it so you get half as many points but can use them anywhere deafeats that whole idea.
The way the system is now is good, nobody says you have to get EVERY DPS talent, GC even said less DPS for more utility. Would I like to have it all? Damn right I would but thats unreasonable. Even if you are one of the other classes that supposedly have left over points, there are still talents you could take to add to DPS in a smaller way, but utility requires some sacrifice.
In the end I think some people are losing sight of the big picture, Raiding isn’t about personal performance, if your DPS can’t pull more than 1900 on a raid but you consistently down bosses your raid is a success. If your DPS does 2500, but wipe because that talent that is deemed “situational” was never taken then you are a failure. DPS meters are only good for checking the baseline of your own abilities to ensure you are ready for content. 1200 DPS for Heroics 1800 DPS for 10 mans 2100 for 25. With utility talents mixed in you can still attain these numbers without having to over gear.
“But this class has this, and they get those…” Hey if you want to be just like everyone else, and have all the same things Blizz should just cut out the different classes, remove the different spec’s, and everyone can play the same toon where the only determining factor is gear. Fun Fun….
@ Cluelessnoob
Sadly, Imp. Fireball/Frostbolt are very powerful DPS talents for the specs that use them. I don’t think anything should be done to them, and I highly doubt anything will ever be done to them.
That said, that’s still not a reason to keep the early trees useless to everyone else.
@ Merlot
That logic is unnecessarily cruel.
Take druids. Omen of Clarity is ridiculously awesome and basically every druid specs to take it.
So Blizzard, instead of leaving the early resto tree basically useless to the other two trees, changed up the early resto talents so that the other specs could make use of them. (Increases to physical damage, boosts to intellect, etc.)
Would it be so hard to offer the same to mages?
@ Green Armadillo
TTW doesn’t necessarily need to be moved to the fire tree. Swapping it with, say, Arcane Stability would accomplish basically the same thing.
The idea of “Torment the Weak” has never seemed to me to be something an arcane mage would do.
Arcane has always been, from an RP standpoint, an alignment neutral tree. Not good or evil, but just obsessed with the math behind magic.
Tormenting weaklings seems like a very fire tree thing to do.
Or even frost…
@ Underbridge
The idea is that anyone can trade off a percent of DPS for a utility ability.
The way TTW is currently implemented, a player would need to sacrifice over 3% DPS for the same result.
It’s just too much.
Is TTW really that mandatory for a raiding Mage since bosses are immune to snares anyway? Or did I miss something?
They added another effect to TTW very recently.
It used to only be activated on snares, but it was changed to activate on any slow effect as well.
Stuff that increases the time it takes to cast spells, stuff that increases the time between melee/ranged attacks… all of it counts.
Basically, if there’s a tank tanking a boss, that boss will be afflicted with a slow effect. Therefore, TTW will be active.
(Thunder Clap, Icy Touch, Judgements of the Just, and Infected Wounds all activate TTW.)
@ Euri – Hotness. I didn’t know that. Thanks for clearing it up =D
“Would it be so hard to offer the same to mages?”
But that’s exactly what I said – your complaint isn’t really with the position of TTW at all, it’s with the bland, near-uselessness of the arcane talents you have to pick up on the way. Shake up arcane by all means, but you can’t expect such a glorious talent as TTW to come so easily as, say, tier 1.
I agree with your point entirely. Its not just mages though…tell me ANY kind of priest that doesn’t HAVE to invest 13 points in disc to pick up meditation. This will be even more mandatory after the regen changes. I would go as far as to say there will be no level 80 priest in the game (except gimps) who will not take it.
So yeah…put those 13 points then choose your spec for priests. Is that the way it should really be?
Hmm, I’m curious about the buffet guy buffing warlocks. We still have QQ. Or at least, affliction locks do. That tree is quite bloated.
umm…most raid bosses are immune to infected wounds as i see “IMMUNE” pop up always beside the damage of Mangle and Maul on my druid and on quartz there is no “infected wounds” debuff on the boss. So are you guys sure the effect is still there?? It just seems really silly to waste 18 talents even if “most” bosses are immune to slowing effect but “some” aren’t…icy veins would still win out for side talent of fire or arcane.
Also, my current spec is deep arcane with frost to IV, and my last time in 10m Maly (we wiped about 10 times before the healers figured out what they were doing) every single time in ph1 and 2 I was well above the other mage which was spec’d 18 arcane for TTW and deep fire he was in full ilvl 213 gear and I am in 3/5 valor 1/5 heroes I have about 4 blues 2 ilvl200 blues and 2 <ilvl150 blues and lvl 70 epic “Hood of Hexing” still because nothing from wrath has replaced it yet.
So anyway in that junk gear going into ph2 my dps was between 4800-5200 (average for all 10 wipes) and his was 2-300 below mine every time. He was in spark buffs too…
I def. want to try out the fireball spec, but all i’ve seen says it is “gear dependent” in which case, if i’m beating out full ilvl213 fireball spec’d mages with a lvl 70 epic and 4 blues as arcane with IV…I can’t imagine how badly I would be on top with full ilvl 213…