MoP LevelingFollow

I think the tradeoff is that leveling is a lot faster now than it used to be. Even without BoA gear. With it, it goes ridiculously fast. Getting to "the end" is a lot more levels away than it used to be but each level is faster to compensate.

Plus, even though you don't get a point/level, you generally get something be it something to train or one of the "baked in" abilities it looks like they're heading towards.

Personally, the whole point of leveling for me is getting to 85 to start playing. Anything before that is means to an end so I don't care too much what comes when or how so long as I feel like the toon is progressing somehow and is functionally fun to play.

I'm probably that weird guy who likes the new MoP way.

Hear me out here.

With the Lich King system, every time you dinged, you got a talent point (and you had to run back to the trainer and update your skills, remember that?). That took all of what, 10 seconds to deal with?

Let's say you were a newbie, you looked at all of those talent points. They didn't force you into a talent tree back then, and you would see a bunch of "meh" talents. Some classes had very well-labeled talent trees, others didn't. Like... "What's the difference between a Sub and Assassin Rogue? What's with this Arms vs Fury stuff?"

Anyways, once you started down a path, every level you stuck a point on. It takes <10 seconds to do unless you're Really not sure what talent you should take, and if you were a newbie, pretty good chance you took the wrong ones. But of course, you didn't know/realize that, you'd only hear about it later when someone says "LOL, you took THAT talent!? What a noob! You shoulda taken blah blah instead!"

Then Cataclysm came, and they made talents every other level and made it so that you don't have to drop everything you're doing to run back to the trainer to update your core abilities so that they aren't underpowered, which sucked when you were questing in, say, Tanaris and you had to haul *** all the way up to Orgrimmar (or worse, Darnassus or Stormwind) just to get your training. Dinging a level meant that you had to full stop right there and go back... or... keep going with underpowered skills.

Anyways, now we get a talent point every 2 levels and there's a lot fewer "junk" talents, but there are still some nuances that people will nit-pick on you for.

When MoP comes, you will choose one huge talent that changes your playstyle every 15 levels. Quality over Quantity! You will get all of the stuff you currently have (and then some, I'd wager) as you level, you just don't open up a screen and pick it out of a list of things that they KNOW most players will pick ASAP.

So, what's the difference?

In MoP, you get that stuff automatically instead of picking it out of a list as you go. Does it really hurt you that much to not have to open up a special list and manually click on stuff to learn it?

And as far as them "dumbing down the gear", again, awesome changes. Expertise is less confusing, and scales like all the other stats (make everything consistent, right?) and PvP gear... well you won't hear anyone whining about wearing PvP gear to PvE Dungeons; as long as the I-level is high enough, you're good to go.

All-in-all, good changes everywhere.

Yet, there are times when a core ability gets a new rank, or, you need something new, which does force you to go back to whatever city to get your training. Say, if you're a rogue, are you truly going to pass up a new rank of Sinister Strike or Eviscerate? What if you're an Arcane Mage.. would you really want to pass up a new rank of Arcane Blast or Missiles? And then there's *new* abilities, such as Enhancement Shamans needing to stop what they're doing and go back to town to learn Stormstrike at 40, I think it was? You'd get Dual-Wield as a talent, but you didn't get much out of DW Enhance until you got SS.



You choose your overall specialization when you get Level 10, and then at 15 you choose your first ability, then every 15 levels after that, another ability.

And versatility? lol. really? Versatility? That hasn't existed in a long, long time and even then it was only a few classes that could do it. Most had 2-3 "accepted" builds. If you weren't one of those builds, you got laughed at/kicked/whatever.

The new method gives you all of those abilities for free. What's the difference between clicking on a cookie-cutter build and having the abilities/passives/etc given to you as you level naturally? There is no difference, except that it removes potential player fail. Dunno about you, but I hate going into a dungeon and seeing 2-3 DPS picking the wrong talents and missing core stuff because they thought some garbage talent woulda been better. Or how about the cluster*beeep* in Wrath, when you had complete freedom? You'd see stupid crap like 25/25/20 or some-crap and they'd do ridiculously low DPS because of absolutely BAD talent choices...

And personally, I hate going into a dungeon and someone will go "You took DIVINITY!? You should have taken Seals of the Pure!" .... let's not forget that I'm currently playing a 32-ish Prot Paladin, and Seals of the Pure does absolutely nothing until I get Seal of Truth (44).



*rolls eyes* So basically you're mad that instead of having to look up what you should take, the game gives you all of that stuff for free?

I don't understand it, but whatever. *shrugs* Honestly, I felt like a lot of talents in Cataclysm's trees should be automatic anyways. I mean, Hammer of the Righteous? That should be a trained ability. Shield of Righteousness? Yes, that should be a trained ability too. Half of the prot tree should have been automatic. There's no "choice" in hardly any of those abilities. You MUST take them or you can't play the class anywhere near effectively. And with the way the talent trees are designed "must take 5 talents to move onto the next tier", you end up taking 75% of the talent tree anyways, no matter what. So what's the point in giving you choices? Only 25% of those talents are actual "choices" anyways. And that's exactly what they did -- they moved the mandatory stuff to automatically learn, and they moved some of the fluff to this new system.

That way when you get to a "3 flavors of icecream" they wanted to make sure that whatever choice you made, actually makes an impact on your playstyle. Can you REALLY tell me that the "+2% armor value from items" talent is a new exciting talent that changes your playstyle? Of course not. Whenever I get a talent like that, I'm like "meh... gotta wait 2 more levels before I get anything interesting... oh wait, this is a 1/3... so I have to wait SIX levels before I get anything interesting. Oh wait, the NEXT talent tier happens to be a "You take less critical hits" .... oh yay, another 6 levels to wait until I can pick a talent point that gives me something new. Suddenly that "new ability every 15 levels" doesn't look so bad, no?

That's the problem with Pre-MoP Talents: Most of this crap is "Meh, okay, my character continues to do the same thing they were doing the last 20 levels, he just does slightly more damage now, or takes slightly less damage." Woooo.

Edited, Mar 3rd 2012 10:54am by Lyrailis

Improvement is Improvement.

Now there's only a handful of times that you really *should* return to town, and that's when you learn a new major ability that greatly impacts your play. That's way better than it was before!



Not necessarily. They are improving them with each new Beta build; I was looking at Paladin talents and I could see where half of the talents is truly "your choice". I couldn't see anything "Cookie-Cutter" about at least half of em. Speed of Light or Pursuit of Justice... unless you're into endgame raiding, I don't think a group will care which you have taken. Me, I'd rather have PoJ; I like passives better than actives.



My point was, is "why not just include that into the build normally since you know everyone is going to take that talent anyways. What's the point of making the player click the button when you KNOW everyone is going to click it anyways? "Gee, I wonder should I take the +Armor Value talent or skip it?" Err, yeah. That should be built-in to the Specialization automatically.



Again, those should be built-in automatically.

Give them time -- they'll keep refining the talent choices so that there really is a CHOICE between which talent. Now some of them are obviously better for PvP or PvE, and they said you can change them on-the-fly, so I could see where some battles you might want Talent A or some battles you might say "hey guys lemme switch real quick" and then try Talent B for battles. etc etc.

Either way, like I said, I was looking at Paladin and except for Hard-Core PvP or PvE, I can see where there's a lot more choice now than there was before. They just removed a lot of the "must-haves" and built them into the class itself. Less chances for player fail, meaning I won't be seeing someone doing 20% of their intended DPS because of ridiculously bad talent choices like we used to see back in Wrath.

That's exactly how it was before ranks were removed. You weren't forced to go upgrade your Fireball to a higher rank every time you leveled up. Would it reduce your downtime if you did? Sure, an increase in damage done is an increase in damage done. However, no one in their right mind would spend 30 minutes in transit just to go train a new rank of Fireball.

It's called planning. "Oh, hey, I'm about to level up. Well, I might as well go sell my crap at the AH, level up my profession and maybe look for a group for Zul'Farrak while I'm there."



Druid 15% movement speed is already cookie cutter. Our alternatives are Feral Charge and a Random Direction Blink 'n' Vanish. Basically, MoP will take away out Feral Charge and 15% movement speed and force us to choose between them. The Blink 'n' Vanish talent is just thrown in there to give the illusion of a third choice - no one is going to pick the third choice, unless they want to gimp themselves.

15% movement speed is a necessity in PvP due to Shred's positional requirement and Blizzard's inability to fix a hitbox bug that has existed for the last eight years. 15% movement speed is not strictly necessary for PvE, but neither is Feral Charge or Blink 'n' Vanish. I guess that means it's free choice, right? Take away two abilities and force us to choose between them for a part of the game where neither matters. Brilliant!



I'm all for removing fluff in talent trees, but there should still be a modicum of choice left in the game. I like the way things are now, where you choose a specialization and get some abilities. You then unlock more abilities via the talent trees (forcing you to invest a certain amount of points in one tree). The talent trees, and putting important abilities in the talent trees, works because it's a carrot on a stick. You go "Oh, cool, I want that ability" and invest points in that talent tree. The way MoP is going to work is that you choose your specialization and the game dumps all the carrots in your lap and tells you to go kill sh*t for 90 levels.

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I think that sounds @#%^ing boring.



Yeah, we get to choose between abilities that were previously core abilities and they're chopping Feral up into two separate specializations, forcing us to either go Rogu-- err, Feral, or Warr-- err, Guardian (lame *** name for a Bear spec, by the way).

MoP isn't giving us anything we didn't already have. The entire talent revamp is an illusion of free choice. You see three cool abilities and go "zomg I get to choose between so much shiny?!" but in reality you already had one or two of the abilities and the third is useless when you really think about it.

I'm not a fan of that.

Edit: Of course, I could be completely wrong about all this as I haven't played the beta or anything. I hope to god I'm wrong about all this.

Edited, Mar 4th 2012 4:34pm by Mazra

Ferals (Cats) don't get Survival of the Fittest, Savage Defense, Thick Hide, Frenzied Regeneration or the mastery (+armor). Even with a 95% armor buff from Heart of the Wild, Cats, unless the damage output in raids is going to drop through the floor in MoP, will get roflstomped if they try to tank something larger than trash.

Guardians (Bears) won't get much use out of any of them, considering a Guardian is usually busy not getting killed and shifting out to throw emergency heals or pewpew would result in a swift death and following wipe.

My point still stands, by the way. Yes, different specializations will have different abilities they'll want for different roles (Arena, Battleground, Raids, Heroics), but that's not choice, that's just cookie cutter disguised as choice. And some of those abilities are still "Gains an extra x amount of y", like Soul of the Forest. +2 rage on my Mangle? 2 energy returned per combo point? How's that different from +20% armor rating? Yeah, I only blow one talent point on it, but I only get six talent points instead of 41.

Maybe they just need to tweak the talents some more. Maybe it's just full of fail. I'm looking at the Druid talents and none of the tiers just jump at me with that "wow!" they should have. I've looked over the other talent trees and some of them are positively awesome, like the Warlock talents. Druids, not so much. I mean, when I have to choose between an AOE root on a 2-minute cooldown, a knockback and a snare...

Edited, Mar 4th 2012 11:08pm by Mazra

Prot Paladin has this problem.

Seals of the Pure: +12% Damage done by Seal of Truth or Seal of Righteousness.

You get this at Level 11, and you get Seal of Truth at 44.

Yes, it works with Seal of Righteousness, but, at 12% considering damage done by the seal is laughably low (at 11, you do what, 8-10 damage per proc of the seal? LOL! I get ONE damage out of this talent per proc! YAY!).

That, and this talent does NOTHING between 32 and 44 when you are using Seal of Insight.

Also, let's consider the other options:

Eternal Glory? lol. With WoG's 20 second cooldown, this talent is useless until 39 (when you get Shield of the Righteous), because you literally have nothing to use Holy Power on except Word of Glory and it doesn't take 20 seconds to build 6 charges of Holy Power, which means you are always at 3/3 Holy Power anytime Word of Glory is ready anyway.

Divinity: +6% Outgoing and Incoming heals. You won't see much of anything coming from this talent until well into your 40s. For every 100 that you are healed, you get healed 106 instead and considering how little damage you take until at least the 40-50+ area, this talent isn't doing much for you either.

So the first 5 talents (TEN levels!) are either useless are they don't even give you a noticeable effect whatsoever due to the nature of percentages.

What's the next 5? Oh, right... +10% Armor Value from Items (at low level, this isn't even -5% DR, when you're taking 100 or less damage a hit at those levels) and -10% attack/ranged speed (meh, you wouldn't notice this until 60+ really) and +0.5 sec on Seal of Judgment (who uses THAT outside of PvP, oh wait, Prot is useless in PvP now because of no Vengeance = LOL damage)?

So that's 20 levels and I still haven't gotten anything good. I keep clicking things, but they're not changing my character in any way that I can even notice.

FINALLY, at Level 29, I FINALLY get something from talents: Hammer of Righteousness. Finally.

So from 10 to 29? pfft. Why even have the talents? They don't make any noticeable changes to your character anyways.

In MoP, my character is going to naturally gain the +10% Armor Value from items, Judgment is already going to cause the -10% Attack Speed, and Seal of Justice... LOL... if anyone did actually use that in PvE, will probably be tweaked to add that 0.5 sec onto it, or not... who cares?

Meanwhile, at Level 15 (and 30), I'll get a choice of...

15a: Speed of Light: 70% increased run speed for 8 sec, 1min cooldown
15b: 45% increased run speed for 3 seconds every Judgment (8 sec currently)
15c: 10% increased run speed all the time + 30% per charge of Holy Power (which is almost always going to be 3 until Level 40.

Nice... lots of +movement for me at Level 15. What do I get at Level 15 right now, other than selecting my Spec (which I'll get at Lv10 in MoP too)? ... right, +1 damage per proc on a seal, +6-12 HP healed per heal, or a useless talent that doesn't even work right now... *sarcastic whistle* And some +armor value that I won't even likely notice.

Okay at Level 30...

30a: Fist of Justice: Half Duration on my Stun. That's PvP, so...
30b: Repentance: I can CC mobs myself! Not that I really need to CC at those levels, but I might want it later
30c: -50% Movement Speed on a mob when I Judge it.

These are all PvP-centric talents, but I could see some use out of B and C. Probably C until later, switch to B. Assuming most vanilla dungeon bosses aren't immune to the effect, I could kite melee boss mobs around a room for LULz, allowing the healer to DPS? And then there's always annoying bow and magic users I can CC. Still more interesting than current Cataclysm talent points; MoP gives me Seal of Truth at 24!! and Hammer of the Righteous at 20, not 29 without me having to click on talents at all.

So yeah, 1-30, Prot Paladin will freaking rule after MoP compared to before it.

Let's consider 30-45:

Cataclysm: You get -Crit (which is nice, finally something you notice), and +50% damage to Crusader Strike. Then, you get Shield of the Righteous (FINALLY, damn, do they make you wait long enough for a HoPo Dump!?), the chance for instantly renewing my Avenger's, and another +50% Crusader Strike damage.

Compare that to MoP:

36: REBUKE! YES! I have to wait until 54 current to get such an awesome ability. I hate waiting until 54 to get that.
44: Heart of the Crusader! OMG, yes!! We'd have to wait until 62 AND it is an active aura which means we have to keep turning it off when we do dungeons currently. This is a PASSIVE which means it'll always be on.
42: Seal of Righteousness: It says 10 damage, but that's probably just a placeholder number; if this actually does decent damage, this will be more useful than Truth against Trash.

Then, at 45, the talent choices:

45a: Selfless Healer: Useless to me as a Prot. I bet Holy will love this, though.
45b: Eternal Flame: Depends. Can I use it on myself? If so, I might take this.
45c: Sacred Shield: Again, can I cast this on myself?


In closing, from 10 to 45... MoP is miles better leveling experience for the Protection Paladin's viewpoint. As for the "choice" in talent tiers? Tier 1 actually presents some choice. Do you like huge bursts of speed for short durations, or do you like a more mild always-there speed buff that gets stronger as you hold onto HoPo without using it? Or do you want something in-between? Tier 2, is all CC/Stun/PvP stuff, I imagine solo Rets might enjoy putting other mobs to sleep much in the same way Rogues can with Sap to make leveling a little easier, especially when there's annoying spellcasters about. At least it is something better than +% to something.'

Tier 3, much of this depends on whether or not Yourself is a valid "Friendly Target". Assuming it is, there's some pretty good choice here too: Obviously if you're Ret or Prot, you won't be using Flash of Light much. BUT, the other two, you can give yourself a semi-powerful HoT, spending HoPo to do so, or, you can give yourself a damage shield that greatly increases your WoG's power during that 30 sec (probably about 2 WoG worth at lower levels, more later).



They give you better talents earlier levels, and they give you access to more class-defining abilities (at least for Prot Paladins they do) at earlier levels. This is always awesome. I hated waiting for 54 to get my interrupt, or having to wait until 29 to get my main AoE threat tool, or having to wait until 44 to get a seal that actually does damage.

I wish MoP talents had existed in Wrath; sadly by the time MoP comes out I will have no more lowbie Prot Paladins left to level!

The reason I made the thread was that when I level up now, I get to pick which one of the cookie cutter talents I get first. It is my choice to look at the talents available and pick the one I am going to invest in now. That is a freedom that is going away. If I am going to level from 1-90 without making some choices along the way... well... it is going to be boring.

Sometimes I imagine this is all big joke on us. You start removing all the barriers to success until the only one left is the person behind the keyboard. I'm just waiting for some creepy old guy at blizzard to jump out of the closet yelling

"I told you all you sucked back in vanilla and you didn't believe me. 'But you have better gear, looking up boss fights is hard, talent trees are complicated, whine whine whine...' Now guess what, you're out of excuses scrub! Loser! GTFO my fire!"

Or something...




Edited, Mar 6th 2012 12:31pm by someproteinguy

I'll see what I can do. A couple of those and maybe we'll see something really interesting; with gremlins...

More on topic though. Really, those +power kinds of talents are only really interesting to me if there are legitimate reasons to not want them in the game. The minute they are in every conceivable spec you'd take for soloing, PvP, PvE, etc they become more like a 'feel good' button you click. Now I like my pellets as much as the next mouse but if they want to do away with those it's okay by me.

Perhaps I've been drinking too much of their punch.