morghast wrote:
The thing that most annoys me about the current trees while leveling is that several times I have found myself trying to decide where to place my next talent point and realize that some of the options affect spells that I won't learn for many more levels. Sure, the trees made sense to people who were already at, or close to, level cap but to someone leveling, it wasn't even a matter of making a choice that added dps or surviveability but sometimes it was just tossing a point into something that looks like something that would be useful in ten levels or so when I can actually learn the spell the talent affects.
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).
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Sure, I will miss having the talent points to spend while leveling alts but I am finding more and more often that I only get to put a point that adds something really cool or fun every 10-15 points. Just today I got a level up on a Rogue alt and I put a point into increasing her hit chance slightly. It just wasn't that exciting.
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!