World of Warcraft - 5.0 Talent Changes

With everyone on hiatus until the expansion in just under a month’s time, I haven’t had the ability to really have a good shot at running through the viability of new talents and the easier switching in a 25 man raid environment. I do feel that the bulk of complaints about something being grossly over or underpowered are completely normal for this point in the game. The same thing happened when 4.0 hit, and 3.0, and 2.0. The rebalancing for the expansion isn’t going to sit well till a month after most people are already 90 and already raiding.

 

If they were hoping to avoid the idea of cookie cutter specs, though, they’re kidding themselves. There might be a little variety in purely situational talent lines for some encounters, but it still feels like most of the time, one talent clearly outdoes the other two.

Take rogues, for example.  Most of the choices for PvE aren’t choices at all; they just vary slightly based on spec. Why take Subterfuge or Shadow Focus as a combat rogue? Why not take Subterfuge as Subtlety? The rest of the talent lines are plagued with similar problems. There’s either a clear choice that will only ever change for a very specific situation, or the choice won’t matter because you’ll probably never use any of the talents anyway.

Admittedly, it’s a different story for PvP and it’ll probably take more time to work out the best and the worst, and it may actually come down to play style a little.

At the core though, picking six talents out of as many groups of three feels excessively simple, but it gives a lot more freedom. I’m looking forward to being able to move talents around without re-specializing so I can switch back and forth between PvE and PvP with far less hassle, and even keep switching talents based on what’s working well and what isn’t, in any situation.

In reality even though it feels insanely oversimplified, the fact remains that even if people still run cookie cutter talents it’ll be the same as it always has, but at least now we have the freedom to switch them along with glyphs depending on the situation. I can only hope some raid mechanics take advantage of this.

-ED