Along with the announcement of the brand new expansion, Blizzard has announced the complete overhaul of the talent system. What do WoW players have to look forward or dread in Talents 2.0?

Along with the news of a brand
new expansion came Blizzard’s announcement of a brand new and
exciting talent system that is being referred to as Talents 2.0. In
this new talent system, that will be introduced with the Mists of
Panderia expansion, Blizzard claims they will be getting back to what
they originally intended; that talents will once again become a unique
form of character customization and those cookie cutter builds that we
were once forced into using will be long gone.

In this new talent model
players will find that their class will have several class abilities
(example: all Warriors will learn Heroic Strike), several spec
abilities (example: all arms Warriors learn Slam), and finally actual
talents (example: any Warrior can choose Throwdown). Talent points have
essentially been scrapped and players will gain access to a new tier of
talents to choose from every 15 levels. This means players will not be
able to place their first talent point until level 15, although they
will still choose their spec at level 10 giving them access to many
spec based abilities.

Once the player has reached a
new talent tier they will be presented with three talents from which
they may choose one. While each talent in the tier will be distinctive
survivability talents will be paired with survivability talents and DPS
talents will be paired with DPS talents, and so on, so that players
don’t feel pressured into choosing a certain talent in any
tier leaving promoting flexibility in the talent tree. Also talents in
these tiers will be comparable and one talent should not stand out
above the rest. Once a player has chosen a talent from a tier they will
no longer have access to the other talents and must respec if they wish
to change it.

For a better idea of what these
talent tiers will look like take a look at the talents available at
level 30 for the Warrior:

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With this new talent system the
idea is that the player will be able to choose talents that not only
make sense for their spec, but are also talents that they want to have
instead of talents they are forced to have because they do more DPS or
healing. This means that there technically should no longer be any
mandatory talents in game, and players will be able to stand next to a
player of the same spec, but still feel like their character is at
least slightly different and unique because of their talents.

Several new talents will be
added, and some unused and rather boring talents will be removed.
Don’t worry if you don’t see one of your favorite
talents though, it may have simply been moved to a class or spec
ability instead. Not to mention that players will no longer have to
visit the trainer to learn new talents, instead they will be able to
learn new talents on the fly and will only need to return to the
trainer to respec.

Now we all know that change is
scary and while I love the idea of the new talent system, I’m
still a little nervous. If it turns out to be all that Blizzard claims
it will be then the game could be greatly improved. Talents will once
again become real game changers and players will have a distinct sense
of individuality once again. How this will actually pan out in game,
though is anyone’s guess.

Want more information on the
new talent system? Head on over to the href="http://us.battle.net/blizzcon/en/blog/3773320/World_of_Warcraft_Class_Talent_System-10_21_2011#blog"
target="_blank">Blizzcon blog
to check out all the juicy details!