Cataclysm, Mastery, Passive Talents

#0 - Dec. 1, 2009, 1:57 a.m.

At Blizzcon, it was stated that with Mastery, the developers would be cutting all of the "passive" bonuses of talents.

One of the examples given was Juggernaut, a warrior talent in the arms tree that allows the warrior to use Charge in combat and adds a 25% chance crit to the next Mortal Strike or Slam. The example also removed the crit bonuses of Juggernaut, with the developers stating that being able to Charge mid combat should be interesting enough.

My concern: There are some talents (such as Improved Overpower, Sanctified Wrath) which are passive benefits that target specific abilities. What my question is, what exactly differentiates a passive bonus from an active bonus?

I'd argue that removing Improved Overpower (since, it could be considered a passive buff) would make the ability Overpower a lot less interesting.

I'd argue that removing the Crit aspects of Juggernaut makes it a lot less interesting of a talent.

But for a TL;DR,
My question are, where is the line drawn between a passive talent bonus to an "active" talent bonus with the planned talent overhaul, and if a talent passively effects (a) certain ability(s) to make that ability more useful (IE Improved Overpower), will it still be cut with this new system?

Ghostcrawler

#18 - Dec. 1, 2009, 5:36 p.m.

Q u o t e:
My concern: There are some talents (such as Improved Overpower, Sanctified Wrath) which are passive benefits that target specific abilities. What my question is, what exactly differentiates a passive bonus from an active bonus?

We're not going to be able to get all damage out of the trees. For example, Improved Frostbolt, a talent that makes Frostbolt cast faster is essentially a passive damage increase, but it does it in a more interesting way than a talent like Arctic Winds, which grants +Frost damage to keep it from being a PvP only talent.

I don't know that Improved Overpower will make the cut, since you pretty much always want to Overpower when you can so it isn't that interesting a talent. Taste for Blood is an interesting talent even though it's pretty much just more damage at the end of the day. Trauma is not particularly interesting, but it's an important group buff which makes it marginally more interesting that a talent that just passively improves your own damage. Something like Deep Wounds is tough. It's pretty passive but it's also pretty iconic for the Arms tree. If crit chances are lower in Cataclysm, and they will be, then it's not the no-brainer it is today, but I still can't imagine an Arms build without it.

Ultimately, what we want to do is just give players a lot more flexibility in how they talent. Some of the trees currently have a "cookie cutter" spec that says something like "Spend the last 3 points wherever you want." We want to get that feel in all the trees, and hopefully with more like 5-8 points spent wherever you want. We also want to make sure you aren't able / forced to skip over the utility talents just to get the +damage, healing or survival talents.