This is going to be an indepth review of the coming changes to the talent system, specifically for us mages. First, a quick review of the changes, then I’ll go over the new talents, and finally, my thoughts on the whole shebang.
The first major change is that you have a talent point every 15 levels, and you have 3 options to chose from. The next change is that the choices are not dependent upon your tree, this means you can have Living Bomb as an arcane or frost mage.
Your choices, at level 15, include Ring of Frost, Cone of Cold and Frostjaw, this tier is effectively a frost tier. Since pictures speak louder, I give you an image, showing the details of each spell, courtesy of MMO-Champion.
At level 30, we get Greater Invisibility, Cauterize and Cold Snap, all effective for survivability.
Level 45 brings us Presence of Mind, Scorch and Arcane Flows.
Level 60 we have Mana Shield, Blazing Speed and Ice Barrier.
At Level 75 we have a tier that modifies our beloved sheep with choices like Sickly Polymorph, Heavy Polymorph and Double Polymorph.
Finally at level 90, we will get either Blast Wave, Dragon’s Breath or Slow to choose from.
Personally, I’m rather optimistic about these new talents. I like the potential of being able to go to my talent tree and say “this looks fun” *click*, instead of “Okay, what did EJ say would give me that extra bit of DPS?” There will probably be some tweaks here and there, however I think this could be the start of a great talent system.
Though it does seem a talent system such as this is slightly biased towards pure DPS in terms of being able to choose. A fellow blogger had some thoughts on the talent system from a druid perspective which should put things to light, http://www.restokin.com/2011/10/wow-class-design-and-the-illusion-of-choice/.
With that said, see you next week with a new post!
1 comment
1 ping
Vuuk says:
6 November 2011 at 06:00 (UTC -7 )
I agree there’s a potential for just picking what you like, but for some tiers it’s still going to be able to be reduced to DPS numbers in some cases, so “the EJ cookie cutter spec” will still exist IMO. (I’m thinking of the lv 45 tier for example)
That said, there’s some really hard choices in there. Which is the idea, I suppose!
Having to pick between Ring of Frost and Cone of Cold as a PvPing mage .. ouch.
Mind Freeze Monday : MoP Mage Talents - Mana Cake Musings says:
7 November 2011 at 00:22 (UTC -7 )
[...] didn’t want to do this type of post at first because I figured it’s been done, but I decided to do so anyway and perhaps try to find a working frost mage spec to blow up pandas [...]