#1 - Oct. 26, 2011, 9:51 p.m.
Please be informed of what the new system will be like, because seeing the 200th person saying "They took our choices away!" is really getting wearying.
1) There are still specs. You reach level 10 and choose Fire, Arcane or Frost as normal.
2) Along with getting your normal spells as you level, like Blink, you will also get UNIQUE spells and abilities based on that spec, like Shatter or Ignite. This is exactly the way the system works now... except instead of giving you a talent point and the illusion of "choice," it just hands out the abilities everyone MUST get anyway, automatically as you level.
3) This means that almost all passive talents in the current trees will become baseline parts of the spec you have now, automatically. Since you currently have just enough talents by 85 to choose maybe 2-3 personal preference talents after putting at least 31 in, this new system will give you more choices, not less, because you will be getting almost all the regular talents from your tree automatically, then choosing 6 abilities that are mostly utilities.
4) Instead of having only talents from one spec as they are now, where based on your spec you only have one "choice" of, say, AoE CC, or self-healing, the new talent tree is the same regardless of spec, and take them from all three, or are completely new. In order to balance this wider selection of abilities, the tree tiers put them in direct confrontation with each-other based on function (movement speed, self-healing, CC, etc).
5) In this way, you will get a new ability talent every 15 levels, roughly the same as you do now anyway. Do not get dismayed by the amount of talent points you are getting, or the "lower amount of choices" you have as a result. In the current model you spend about 15 levels worth of talent points on passive, baseline, must-have skills for every 1 talent that's an actual ability. Now most of those abilities are baseline, and new talents have taken their places.
6) Most of these talents are not designed to significantly boost sustained DPS, healing, or survivability. And those that DO boost DPS/Healing/Survival will be put in the same row to compete with others that do the same thing. This is intended, as otherwise it would eliminate the "choice" and resume the current system of cookie-cutting the best tree based on higher performance. This also means you do not NEED the talents to do your jobs: all the buffs and effects that you currently have that help you heal and tank and DPS end-game will be provided based on your spec.
7) The talents are not done yet. Some are too weak. Some are too strong. Some will change completely by the time MoP hits Beta, and more will change before it goes live. Stop basing your opinion on the "balance" of the preview and focus on the overriding style and function.
8) The ideal behind the new tree is that you are choosing from similar abilities based on your personal preference; for example, do you want a small passive movement speed all the time, a moderate movement speed boost on a short cooldown, or a strong movement speed boost on a long cooldown? No right answer: just which you think would be most useful, and certainly more variable than the current system which gives you only one "choice" per spec.
9) And finally, yes, there will be tiers where you want more than one of the available talents. This is not "unfair," or a "problem," or something that needs to be fixed: That is what it means to have to make a real choice: that there is no easy answer. With 720+ combinations of talent trees for each class, it would be very, very hard, if not impossible, for there to be a "cookie cutter" spec.
That is all. Thumbs up and request sticky, so we can stop seeing misinformed posts about why the new trees suck.
Edit:
I think a lot of people are overestimating the sorts of things theorycrafters actually do. Sort of like the difference between how a Hollywood movie portrays a hacker and what it's like in real life.
You'll see some people on EJ postulating what might be best, but a lot of it is going to depend on either fight mechanics, your job in the raid or personal preference.
As the person above mentioned, it's actually really easy to tell who in this thread has ever done any theorycrafting or spec building on their own, and who just relies on cookie-cutters. The latter are all the people convinced that new ones will always exist, because they have no idea what it takes to build an "optimal spec," so they simply don't recognize why the new talents are immune to them.
