There are three types of talents. Talents that buff only you and your performance, talents that buff only somebody else and their performance, and talents that do both.
Take Improved Fireball. This talent only improves your own performance, having zero effect on anyone else.
Improved Scorch, on the other hand, provides a very powerful buff to everyone else. The mage does benefit from the debuff, too, but there isn’t anything about the talent that is pure selfishness. In fact, it actually lowers the mage’s DPS to keep the debuff up.
Focus Magic is something in the middle. The buffee gets a 3% crit boost, and so does the buffer.
There have been and still are many buffs that are selfless in nature, but most of them have quietly evolved to have a selfish portion to them anyways.
Improved Mark of the Wild, for instance. The talent used to increase the strength of Mark of the Wild. While this did provide a little bit of a buff for the druid, the talent’s main purpose was to buff everyone else. Now, in addition to boosting the effect of MotW, it will also give the druid a permanent 1/2% boost to all of their stats. (more…)
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