My Thoughts On 31 Talent Trees

So yesterday the new 31 talent trees were released - can be viewed here and here. We went from having an 11 tier talent tree into a 7 tier. Reason being:

Blizzard quote from Zarhym

The goal for Cataclysm remains to remove a lot of the passive (or lame) talents, but we don’t think that’s possible with the current tree size. To resolve this, we're reducing each tree to 31-point talents. With this reduction in tree size we need to make sure they're being purchased along a similar leveling curve, and therefore will also be reducing the number of total talent points and the speed at which they're awarded during the leveling process.

Talents that have been removed from the resto tree:

• Nature's Focus - Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Healing Touch, Wrath, Entangling Roots, Cyclone, Nourish, Regrowth and Tranquility by 23/46/75%.
• Subtlety - Reduces the threat generated by your Restoration spells by 10/20/30%.
• Naturalist - Reduces the cast time of your Healing Touch and Nourish spells by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 seconds and increases the damage you deal with physical attacks in all forms by 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Omen of Clarity - Each of the druid's damage, healing spells and auto-attacks has a chance of causing the caster to enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana, rage or energy cost of your next damage spell, healing spell or offensive ability by 100%. (trainable)
• Master Shapeshifter - Requires 3 points in Natural Shapeshifter - Grants an effect which lasts while the druid is within the respective shapeshift form. Bear Form - Increases physical damage by 2/4%. Cat Form - Increases critical strike chance by 2/4%. Moonkin Form - Increases spell damage by 2/4%. Tree of Life Form - Increases healing by 2/4%.
• Tranquil Spirit - Reduces the mana cost of your Healing Touch, Nourish and Tranquility spells by 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Improved Tranquility - Reduces threat caused by Tranquility by 50/100% and reduces the damage you take while channeling Tranquility by 25/50%.
• Improved Tree of Life - Reduces the cooldown of your Tree of Life by 30/60/90 seconds, and increases your damage done while in Tree of Life by 5/10/15%.
• Improved Barkskin - Grants 80/160% additional armor contribution from cloth and leather items while in Travel Form or while not shapeshifted. In addition, the damage reduction granted by your Barkskin spell is increased by 5/10%.
• Gift of the Earthmother - * Increases the healing done by your Tranquility on targets at or below 25% health by 4%, increases the healing done by the bloom effect of your Lifebloom by 2%, and your Rejuvenation spell also instantly heals for 3% of the total periodic effect. *Increases your total spell haste by 4/6/8/10% and reduces the base cooldown of your Lifebloom spell by 4/6/8/10%.
  

*Don't know if it still increases haste since I didn't see it in the old Cataclysm talent trees. Got this information from here.

New Talents:

• Blessing of the Grove
• Perserverance
• Efflorescence

One of the main things I was looking foward to in Cataclysm was the new gift of the earthmother that we were getting (similar to our t8 bonus rejuvenation effect). I don't know if they're planning to still implement that or just remove it forever. As you can see A LOT of talents have been removed. One that I noticed the most was the new improved tree of life that reduced it's CD. Does this mean that it will remain a 5 minute cooldown? I hope not! I was disappointed to still see Natural Shapeshifter and Furor still in the restoration tree. Natural Shapeshifter doesn't really seem useful as a PvE resto druid as how the only form we are is tree form and that's on a 5 minute cooldown. As for Furor, they could do something like increase our intellect in caster or tree form. Like put what we lost from not having Master Shapeshifter into Furor to make up for the loss.

I've been messing around with the talent tree and with those 2 in the first tier i'm forced to choose one for a filler to get to the next. So far I came up with this. Going down into the balance tree I noticed how they removed Nature's Splendor. With that we lose a rejuvenation tick, two regrowth ticks, and two lifebloom ticks. But we have to remember that our HoTs duration will not be shortened due to haste so that's good, but I still wished they kept it. Hopefully they're changing our HoTs to be the durations they were with it *crosses fingers*.

One major thing that disappointed me about this was how little choices there were. Blizzard said that "We’ll still have room for extra flavorful talents and room for player customization.." but I don't see that much player customization in these new talent trees. The two talents that I didn't get (Natural Perfection and Fury of Stormrage) are basically PvP talents while Natural Shapeshifter and Furor are mostly for feral or balance druids it seems. There wasn't a lot of customization for resto talents that had to do with healing so that made me a sad panda.

I know, I know.. These aren't final, but I hope they really put more choices because right now it seems like we're going back to cookie cutter specs. I'm done being a sad tree. Now to just wait for more updates and cross my fingers for a beta invite (if they're still going on). :)