It's so funny, the things I hear sometimes when I give advice to other players. I mean, I understand that not everyone MUST think exactly the way I do, but like, some things just don't seem like common sense to anybody's mind.
Take my husband, for instance. Despite having played the game for 2 years now, he is quite noobish at times. He has a morbid terror of putting points into the wrong talent. Every time he gets a new point he will go online and look up the most popular spec before spending that point. Or worse, he will hold onto several points until he's had time to do this research. He's level 50-something, a point in the game where it really isn't that big of a deal where your talents go into. Yes, it matters a lot more than when you were level 20. But it's not going to make or break your character in any way, you know? Might I also remind you that you can re-spec at any time? Like, when you hit 85, maybe? The first time you respec it costs like 30 silver, and the maximum you pay for a respec is only like 35g, I believe. That's not a lot of money.
Then yesterday, I noticed a friend on his new DK with 0 talent points. I pointed this out, having done a similar thing myself (when they reset points for cata, I forgot about my DK and played her with 0 talents, thinking, "why are things taking so long to die???"). His excuse was that he didn't want to commit to a spec without doing the research first. My response was, of course, ???? Seriously, it takes all of 15 seconds to fill up your talent tree. Even if they're the shittiest talents, your dps and survivability will improve 100%.
Well there I go again, sounding like an elitist asshole. My point is that, I just don't get why people are so afraid of this. Maybe they're still stuck in Diablo mode where you couldn't re-do your talent trees and so you had to get it right the first time. Yes, I will scratch my head and go "huh?" if you have a weird talent tree. But trust me, it's much worse to have no talent tree. It's like gimping yourself for no good reason when it's 1. completely reversible, 2. helps you level faster, and most importantly, 3. helps you learn that class all the better.
My approach to talents is pretty simple. Some good general guidelines to follow are:
1. Anything that boosts the damage (or healing if you're a healer and mitigation if you're a tank) of an ability you use frequently is good. ie, things like Improved Shadow Word: Pain, Improved Sinister Strike, etc. Make sure to max out these talents, but ONLY if it's an ability you use frequently. If it's some pvp talent you'll never use, don't waste points in them.
2. Distinguish between pvp and pve talents. If you plan on pvp-ing, use your secondary spec. Don't try to combine pve and pvp in one spec because you'll suck at both. Talents that reduce CC effects on you are almost certainly pvp talents. Other talents that are not exactly for your role (ie, damage reduction for anything but a tank, increased speed effects for ranged DPS) are also more or less pvp talents. Some trees have more of these talents than others, and they are generally THE pvp talent tree of choice. Trust me, you'll never see a subtlety rogue in a raid. If you do, he is terribad.
3. Talents that increase your core stats such as agility, stamina, critical strike, hit rating etc, are almost always worth the points. Obviously if you're a mage you odn't want increased stamina, but a talent like Piercing Ice - improves the critical strike chance of all your spells by 3% - that's fantastic. Especially since frost mages have some spectacular crit chances.
4. Max out your talents! If a talent gives you 2% increased damage/healing/stam per point, MAX IT OUT! Don't just stick 1 point here and 1 point there. The effects scale non-linearly, and you'll get a much greater benefit from maxing out a good talent over spreading it out over different ones. The only exception to this is if you're trying to max out a tier so you can put points into a different tier. If you just need 1 more point in something to get to the next tier, then by all means invest it in something without maxing it out. Or after filling out all your trees you only have a couple points left, stick it in the most useful talent you can find without worrying about maxing that talent. You can't, you have no more points.
When I level I just fill out my own talent trees using these guidelines, and most often when I compare them with the "optimum spec", there is very little difference. Another thing to remember is that the optimum spec you find on the internet might not be suited to you for whatever reason. If you can do your job well, no one will say "lol why do you have 2 points in this talent instead of 3". Maybe you're not interested in hardcore raiding and want to farm low level dungeons. By all means, spec for that purpose. Maybe you want to do arenas exclusively with a certain group composition, by all means spec to suit that specific group.
It's really not the end of the world to put a point into the wrong talent. It is good to research so that your leveling pace is faster and you can learn your class better. But really, this morbid fear of speccing incorrectly is quite beyond my comprehension.
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