3.1 talent build (speculation)

[Melathys]

any calculators up yet?

or is that impossible. With not having to buy kings, and a couple 5 pointers getting reduced, I'm curious what I'll do with the extra talent points.

[Worldie]

Noone knows how talents will be in 3.1

When 3.1 PTR will be up you can expect talent calculators up on mmochampions or wowhead in a few hours.

For now we don't know how our tree (and many others) will look like in a month.

[Melathys]

I figured as much.

Wonder if we'll get an 11 point talent, lol.

[greatcow95]

I figured as much.

Wonder if we'll get an 11 point talent, lol.

If we do, I'm betting it will be a passive ability.

[Lemondish]

Considering Kings, a tier 1 5 point talent, is going to become baseline, I'm thinkin we'll see a replacement or shift early in the tree. I'm banking more on anew passive talent.

They intend to slim down a lot of our big 5 point talents, most likely down to 3 points each, except Imp HoJ, which may become our 11 pointer. In this scenario, we're forced to get talents we either don't like, or provide no significant PvE capability whatsoever. I don't think this is part of the plan and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some new talents deeper in the tree.

A nice point to make, however, is that we can technically, without any additional talents, make it down to Improved Lay on Hands in Holy. That wouldn't be too bad for a second oh crap button, and Divine Intellect isn't HORRIBLE when you consider its small contribution to Divine Plea.

Here's my predictions...

We know SA is getting nerfed, mostly due to issues in Arena and sort of confirmed when we saw the new Guarded by the Light. With SA the way it is, we don't have mana issues, but with Guarded being this hot new constant mana regen, we can expect an almost complete reworking of SA so it isn't such a huge contributor of our required tanking resources.

I'm predicting that SA will still exist, just in a lower capacity and only providing us EXTRA resources, not resources we NEED in order to tank, just resources we can use in order to tank better. Any of the new talents will bank on that and provide the Paladin a proc or new tool that allows him to use excess resources. As it stands, with DP and JoW being steady regen, and our rotation being steady expense, we might be able to maintain our normal rotation without having to rely on being hit. So a resource dump would be awesome.

[fuzzygeek]

They did say kings was going baseline.

Are they still going to differentiate between kings and imp kings?

Yes, it would be stupid. No, I wouldn't be surprised.

[Tronden]

They did say kings was going baseline.

Are they still going to differentiate between kings and imp kings?

Yes, it would be stupid. No, I wouldn't be surprised.

That would be freakin hilarious. That would explain a whole lot...
Yeah, I bet the 2% kings will be baseline, and the improved kings will be points to be taken again.
*ugh* I swear that they moved it out to 5 points just to make tree filler. So now that they are weed-whacking, what manure are they going to put in to waste our points on now?
Oops, almost started making a rant post...
Back on topic - yeah, its my bet that they will make that 2% kings baseline and not the 10%.

[KysenMurrin]

Anticipation on tier 1 is my bet. We might still need a new ~3 point talent somewhere around tier 2 or 3.

I really don't think Kings will go baseline at 2%, the point cost was only done to fill space.

We can't really know until we see what else they have planned (what are they doing to Sanctuary is the big question).

[majiben]

Any chance reckoning would go T1 or would they worry about ret burst too much in PvP? Ponders...

[Loras]

We can't really know until we see what else they have planned (what are they doing to Sanctuary is the big question).

They said they're looking into ways of giving warriors rage from block/parry/dodge/. I wonder, what happens to druids and DKs aggro generation resource then? And if they make something to warriors in order to provide them with their own sanctuary-like utility, then NO WAY our sanctuary stays the same or stacks with them... That would be even more monstrous and a spit in our face

[Fridmarr]

They did say kings was going baseline.

Are they still going to differentiate between kings and imp kings?

Yes, it would be stupid. No, I wouldn't be surprised.

...I will hunt you down, I swear!

[moduspwnens]

Perhaps Reckoning will stay where it is, but be only one point. That'd be nice.

[Elsie]

Perhaps Reckoning will stay where it is, but be only one point. That'd be nice.

It'd be worth it at 2 or 3 points probably.

I think Improved Hammer of Justice is our 'new' tier 3 "one point" talent.

[Torquemada]

Assuming that Improved HoJ is still 2 points, and SoR becomes viable with the Glyph, I'm considering this spec, or something like it. Of course, it will only work if they shift around the other talents to put something in Tier 1 rather than creating a new Tier 1 talent sink.

I'm also dabbling with something like this. I have a feeling that 3% crit plus Crusade will work out to more damage and threat than 5 points in SotP, but it would be at the cost of DG.

Granted it's all conjecture at this point.

I think they're either going to drop kings to 5% and leave it baseline, or keep it as is at 10% and assume every raid will have a Pally and balance encounters around it being a buff in the raid. Having 4 points in the first tier to "free it up" to specs who can't otherwise afford to take it is pointless, and I would actually say that Blizzard doesn't seem to be up to that kind of chicanery as of late.

[Nalyn]

They did say kings was going baseline.

Are they still going to differentiate between kings and imp kings?

Yes, it would be stupid. No, I wouldn't be surprised.

At this point I'm pretty sure it's going to be the full, 10%, kings that we all know and love, it would be willfully stupid, among other things, to make it baseline as anything BUT 10%, and while they have done such things in the past, I don't think that is what they are going for currently.

However, as others have mentioned, I'm interested in just how the prot tree, as well as ret, end up getting changed, because I think we can all agree that there are going to be more talent changes beyond just the handful that have been announced.