Spells and talents in Burning Crusade

The priest spells and talents have been added to the spells and talents page of the Burning Crusade website. Some very interesting stuff, like a group renew spell as 41 point holy talent. And an area of effect magic dispel, which removes negative debuffs from friendly targets, and positive buffs from the enemy. It also is stronger than the previous dispel, able to remove effects that previously were impossible to remove. According to some Blizzard representative on the US forums that includes the ability to remove the paladin's invulnerability bubble. The PvP paladin community is foaming at the mouth. But if you ever played PvP as Horde you will be aware that on a typical battlefield there are far more paladins than in PvE, so I guess deflating the paladin's bubble isn't such a bad idea. (Sorry, couldn't resist *that* pun.)

For any class the new talents and the additional 10 talent points pose an interesting question: How do you spend your talent points best? Up to now, quite a large number of people spent 31 points in one talent branch, and the remaining 20 in another. That typically gives you the top talent plus everything necessary from the main branch, plus quite some good abilities from your second branch. But the talent trees are designed to have good talents at 21 points, so for example a priest wanting the top holy talent Lightwell can't take the very good 21 point discipline talent spirit buff. Now the Burning Crusade changes the equation. At level 70 you will have 61 talent points to spend, and the top talent of each tree costs 41 points. So you could go 41/20, gain the new talents of your chosen main talent branch, and not change anything in your secondary branch. But you could as well go 31/30 or something in between, getting more talents from your secondary branch by foregoing the very top of your main branch.

I am sure that every class and every one of the three branches inside of every class will hotly debate what the best build will be. But in the end it depends on your circumstances. For example the top holy talent, group renew, is awesome in a 5-man group. However in a raid that talent is a lot less useful, because it only works on your own group, doing exactly nothing for 20 out of 25 (or 35 out of 40 if you still go to the old raid dungeons) raid participants. So I can totally see a raiding priest putting less than 41 points into holy, and more than 20 into discipline, to get the spirit buff and other interesting discipline talents. If the same priest was in a much smaller guild, doing mostly 5-man groups, he might go for 41 points in holy after all.

Of course the day The Burning Crusade comes out, most priests will first do something different: Use their free respec (all players get all their talent points refunded for free, due to the massive changes) to change their talents to shadow. The new 41 point shadow talent gives you a kind of fast heal spell while in shadow form, so using that and the bubble a soloing priest will never ever to have to leave his shadow form again. At level 66 priests get a nifty new spell, which summons 3 shades to attack your enemy for 8 seconds. Not really a "pet", but another good soloing spell to deal more damage. Another new shadow spell is shadow word death, an instant direct damage spell with a twist. If you just use it to hurt an enemy, it deals equal damage to you, but if you kill an enemy with that spell, you take no damage. Obviously a great finishing move.

I fear there will be quite a dispute about priest talents in many guilds after the expansion comes out. I would guess that the majority of experience points needed to get from 60 to 70 will be gathered while soloing. So many of the priests will certainly want to go shadow at least until they hit 70. But the guilds as a whole will probably still want to do guild events, for example raids to the old level 60 raid dungeons in groups with mixed levels from 60 to 70. Or going to those new 5-man instances which can be done below level 70. And of course for these guild events the guilds will prefer their priests to be holy spec'd. What is a poor priest to do? If he stays holy the guild will complain that he isn't leveling fast enough, and if he goes shadow they will complain that his healing isn't that good any more. Playing a support class isn't always easy.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:19 AM Permanent Link