Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for and about the Hunter class, sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.

From: The Big Bossman at WoW Insider

To: The WoW Insider peons

Subject: Get to work!

Write a post on each of your class's trees, or you're fired. Fired with extreme prejudice!

Love,

Dan O., aka The Punisher

...

/gulp

Holy crap, we're in trouble now. Why? Because not only do we have to write about Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival, but we've now we've got pet talent trees too: Tenacity, Cunning, and Ferocity! Six talent trees, are you kidding us?

This is going to take a while.

And we should probably start from the beginning.

It's hard to determine the best and worst talents for a class that has three different roles. The best tanking talent is obviously going to be useless if you're primarily a healer, and the worst thing for a prot pally might be excellent with a ret build. Nevertheless, there are certain talents in all three trees that shine brightly, and other talents that make you ask "Who actually takes these?" These ... are those talents.

Best Holy Talents:

1. Holy Guidance: Increases your spell damage and healing by 7/14/21/28/35% of your total Intellect. It's not a shiny new ability, it's not a magical button for mana efficiency, and it doesn't wow the crowds, but my God, is it good for both PVE and PVP. It allows the Int on our gear to do triple duty, increasing our healing as well as our mana pool and all-important crit chance.
2. Healing Light: Increases the amount healed by yourHoly Light and Flash of Light spells by 4/8/12%. If you're full holy, you're probably raid/PVP healing or under a misconception about the power of Shockadins. If it's the former, this spell is invaluable. I only wish you could put five points in it ...
3. Illumination: After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock heal spell, gives you a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to gain Mana equal to 60% of the base cost of the spell. Pre-2.1, this would have been a no-brainer for #1. But they nerfed it from returning 100 percent of mana to 60 percent, since pallies were stacking spell crit and grouping with shadow priests for essentially unlimited mana in raids. Still a nice talent, but not as good as it used to be.
4. Holy Power: Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy spells by 1/2/3/4/5%. This, along with the less-powerful-cause-it's-only-Holy-Light talent Sancified Light, works well with Illumination and spell crit for keeping up your mana.
5. Spiritual Focus: Decreases chance to be interrupted by taking damage when casting Flash of Light and Holy Light by 14/28/42/56/70%. Not super for a raid environment, but excellent for PVP, grinding, and everything else. This talent saved me a ridiculous amount of times while leveling.

The Lich King is coming to World of Warcraft -- and with him ten more levels, ten more talent points, and (we presume) three additional tiers of talents for every tree. This means the question on the mind of many a theorycrafter is what these talents might be. And while it's been discussed thoroughly on the forums, today I'm asking you. What sorts of talents do you want to see available to your class for 51 talent points? And what sorts of talents do you expect Blizzard to implement?

This question actually came from Guild Chat in <It came from the Blog>. A few evenings ago, there was some question about the best spec to level a Druid with, and while many people returned Feral, just for ease of soloing, it actually brought up another point. You see, our little Insider guild on Zangarmarsh is very much focused on being completely laid back. This means we have no intent of running endgame raids, or anything of that nature. Obviously, this means you can level as hybrid or off-spec as you like -- points in all three, or points in none if you're out to try something completely off the wall!

But this got me to thinking about a guild I had been in. Once upon a time my main was a Mage, who I took to endgame on a combination Arcane/Fire spec that I had an absolute blast playing. Once I got to endgame, I specced her Frost as all Mages at endgame were then expected to spec for raiding. After raiding for a while, I got incredibly bored with her. I wound up switching full-time to my Rogue when the chance came. Now that Burning Crusade is out (and my Rogue is comfortably at 70 with my Druid catching up) I've finally taken my Mage off the mothballs. After speccing her back to Arcane/Fire, I'm having a lot of fun tearing around and burninating the countryside with her again.

For those of you who have ever switched a spec for a guild/group/battleground, how did you feel about it later on down the road? Did you miss being able to tinker with your build? Did you resent having to do it? Did you get bored with it? And for those of you who say that you would never spec for a guild's progression, would anything ever induce you to reconsider? Have you ever switched back, progression be damned -- or even left a guild over being required to keep a certain spec?

Well, I tend to agree with the sentiment expressed by this thread on the beta forums, which praises the 1 copper respecs currently available to beta players. Of course, not everyone agrees -- there are also those who side with Blizzard's standing opinion on the matter, which states that your talent spec shouldn't be a casual decision, and ought to mean something. And perhaps poster Warrenders hits the nail on the head when he explains that:

It would invalidate talent choices and specs as everyone can be any spec they want any time they wanted. Why not just make all talents baseline skills and be done with it then?

But regardless of your opinion on the issue, there is some excellent discussion -- from both sides of the fence -- here.

More interesting beta changes popping up this weekend -- Paladinsucks has brought to my attention some interesting paladin changes. Good news first -- Protection buffs! In addition to increasing the thread provided by Righteous Fury, Improved Righteous Fury now also reduces damage taken by 2/4/6% while active. And in addition to reducing the cooldown of Divine Shield, Sacred Duty also increases overall stamina by 3/6%. Nice!

However, one can't live on buffs alone... and these changes come with nerfs to the Retribution tree (previously reported, but just now going live in the beta). Crusader Strike's cooldown is once again 10 seconds and Vengeance once again provides only a 10% bonus to your physical and holy damage.

Paladins who want to be tanks are thrilled, while paladins who want to do damage or PvP are discouraged. (Well, that's putting it mildly, isn't it?)

Update: Clarified that the Retribution tree changes/nerfs had been announced, but were only now implemented.

[Thanks, Lavis!]

The 41-point talent for rogues in the subtlety tree, Cloak of Shadows, never really impressed me. However, while I can't see myself spending that many talent points for it, I can certainly see its uses, and I know I'll be using it frequently if the change in the Burning Crusade beta -- making it a trainable skill -- makes it to the live realms. And before you think it's too good to be true and start pointing out that Cloak of Shadows is still listed as the 41-point talent in the official talent calculator, you should know that Tseric seems to have confirmed the change -- or at least, in his posted response to the thread about the change, he doesn't deny it -- only talks about reasons for making trainable high level talents.

Of course, if the 41-point talent is trainable, that leaves the question of what the new talent might be -- and I believe the above screenshot is legitimate. The Shadowstep ability is getting too much discussion on the beta forums for it to have been a fabrication by a single person.

They just keep coming. Today's changes focus on the shaman, with several tweaks for their elemental and enhancement trees. I don't find these changes awe-inspiring, but they aren't bad news, either.

• Parry - Renamed Spirit Weapons. Now "Gives a chance to parry enemy melee attacks and reduces the threat generated by your melee attacks by 15%."
• Mental Quickness - Moved to Unleashed Rage position.
• Unleashed Rage - Moved to Dual Wield Specialization position.
• Dual Wield Specialization - Moved to Mental Quickness position, reduced to 3 ranks for 2/4/6% hit chance. Still requires Dual Wield.
• Totem of Wrath - Now "...increases the chance to hit and critically hit with spells by 3% to all..."
• Elemental Precision - Now "Increases your chance to hit with Fire, Frost and Nature spells by 1/2/3% and reduces the threat caused by Fire, Frost and Nature spells by 4/7/10%."

In today's round of changes we seem to have... I'm sorry, but I can think of no better way to phrase it... nerfs. Paladins, mages, and warlocks have all gotten some talent tweaks that reduce their power. I don't think the warlock change was uncalled for (that talent was beyond belief in its previous form), and can't say much for the rest. Your thoughts?

Paladin

• Vengeance - Increases damage by 2/4/6/8/10%, reduced from 3/6/9/12/15%
• Crusader Strike - Cooldown increased to 10 sec., from 6 sec. Should now have new icon.

Mage

• Molten Fury - Rank 3 removed. Ranks 1 and 2 unchanged.
• Elemental Precision - Changed to "Reduces the mana cost and chance targets resist your Frost and Fire spells by 1/2/3%."
• Empowered Fireball - Reduced to 3% per rank from 4%

Warlock

• Unholy Power - Reverted to "Increases the damage done by your Voidwalker, Succubus, Felhunter, and Felguard's melee attacks by 4/8/12/16/20%." It no longer increases Shadow and Fire damage.

I'm not sure how I missed out on these recent talent changes when they were posted, but here they are nevertheless. Blizzard is really twisting my arm here to try to get me back to playing a warlock again, but we also have a paladin and priest change.

Warlock

• Demonic Sacrifice - Felguard effect now restores 2% mana every 6 sec. (changed from 2% every 4 sec.) in addition to the 10% damage increase.
• Master Demonologist - Felguard effect tooltip corrected to increase damage by 1/2/3/4/5% and resistances by .1/.2/.3/.4/.5 per level.
• Unholy Power - Now also "...increases all Shadow and Fire damage you cause by 1/2/3/4/5%."
  

Paladin

• Seal of Blood - Additional weapon damage increased to 40%, from 30%.

Priest

• Vampiric Touch - Rank 3 now costs 425 mana.

When I saw the first-released Burning Crusade talents, I was very impressed. Looking from a healer's perspective, I envied the paladin's new holy tree (and determined to roll a Horde paladin when the expansion arrived). And the warlock changes (I have a retired level 60 warlock) made me want to dust off my warlock and start raiding with it again. So I had high expectations -- and the initial talent release disappointed me.

However, Blizzard has more recently released some revisions to the priest talent trees which are somewhat more interesting, and at least make me stop to think before deciding I should immediately reroll. (I have already reserved the character name "Rerolled" on my realm for my paladin-to-be, just in case.) Read on for talent-by-talent impressions...

Yes, yes -- there were talent updates just yesterday. And today there are more. A lot more. There are large changes for druids (which, as a druid wannabe, made my jaw drop) as well as a number of paladin changes and one warrior tweak. And Nethaera still says to check back soon for more updates. All these talent changes really do suggest things aren't yet set in stone. (And that I need to finish leveling that druid of mine.) There are too many changes to list here, so click ahead and read on for the full details.

You heard correctly -- we have official news on hunter talents and spells. (I'm linking them via the European site, because the US site seems to be swamped right now.) These talents seem very similar to what we saw leaked last week, even including the odd "snake trap" ability. (Let the "snakes on a..." jokes begin!) And, before you ask -- yes, that is a legitimate screenshot from the website.

Tactical Mastery: every Warrior both loves and hates it. Loves it, because it makes stance dancing much easier (the talent lets you keep rage around while you switch between stances to use different abilities). Hates it, because most warriors consider it so necessary that even if they don't spec Arms, they have to use at least 10 points to level it all the way up. Recently, this little love/hate relationship has gained fire, because in the new Burning Crusade talents, Blizzard has moved Tactical Mastery over to the first tier of the protection tree. Warriors, as they are wont to do, smell blood in the water, and lots of them are fighting with Tseric to try and get Blizz to make it trainable instead, and remove it from the tree completely.

Now if my Shaman prediction hasn't convinced you of my greatness, it might interest you to know that I've leveled up not one but two warriors (and am working on a third). So I know what I'm talking about when I say: Blizzard will never take Tactical Mastery out of the talent tree. As Tseric says, learning how to stance dance and choose abilities by stance is one of the elemental parts of the class. Besides, Tactical Mastery isn't even completely necessary anyway-- one warrior in my guild never bothered to learn it, and instead counts on timed Bloodrages and DPS to make up the lost rage. So if you're waiting to TM to disappear from the tree, don't hold your breath.

Tseric has also posted an interesting "Design Philosophy for Warriors." Warriors, it seems, are like the workhorses of Azeroth-- every race can be one, and there are plenty to go around, so the class has to be as customizable and yet as viable as possible. The devs working on the Warrior class, Tseric says, aren't interested in removing tough choices-- they're interested in getting players to make them. Removing TM would do exactly the opposite. But at the same time, making those choices pays off-- as I learned yet again last night: dual wielding and duoing with a priest, my little gnome warrior was unstoppable.

Several modifications have been made to the existing shaman review.  The talent calculator should already be updated with these changes.  So what does everyone think of the following new changes?

• Totemic Focus: Now reduces mana cost of totems by  5 to 25% (was 3 to 15%).
• Elemental Devastation: Moved down to tier 3 - swapped with Storm Reach.
• Storm Reach: Moved up to tier 4- swapped with Elemental Devastation.
• Totemic Mastery: Now increases totem range by 10 yards (was 5 yards), but will not stack with the 3-piece Earthfury bonus.