wow Battle for Azeroth Beta Build 26788 Talent Changes

[Stan 5,020]

An overview of the latest talent updates added in this week’s Beta Build 26788.

Welcome to the latest round of talent updates on Battle for Azeroth Beta. This week's build mainly affects Frost Death Knights & Arms / Fury Warriors.

We updated our Battle for Azeroth Class Changes to correspond with all changes listed below, and you can find more information about Battle for Azeroth by visiting our Expansion Hub. 

Note: The latest Beta Build 26788 does not include the recently-announced changes to MM Hunters, Paladins & Monks.

Death Knight

Frost

• Abomination's Might (level 58 talent) removed.
• Frozen Pulse (level 90 talent) removed.
• Hungering Rune Weapon (level 100 talent) removed, functionality baked into Empower Rune Weapon.
• Inexorable Assault is now a level 56 talent (up from 75) and has a new functionality:
  • Gain Inexorable Assault every 8 sec, stacking up to 5 times.
  • Obliterate and Frostscythe consume a stack to deal an additional [ 20% of Attack Power ] Frost damage.
• Runic Attenuation is now a level 57 talent (down from 56).
• Asphyxiate is now a level 58 Frost talent.
• Death Pact is now a level 75 Frost talent.
• Frostwyrm's Fury is a new level 90 talent.
• Freezing Fog is now a level 100 talent (down from 57) + functionality updated:
  • Rime increases the damage of Howling Blast by an additional 100%.

Blizzard (Source)

The next Beta build will include updates to Frost Death Knight. There has been a little more iteration since then (details later), but it will have the bulk of the changes, which are mostly focused on adjustments, rearrangements, or replacements for talents. The baseline spec and core rotation hasn’t changed much – Frost remains a fast-paced, proc-based rotation. The goals for the changes include:

• Consolidate the multiple self-buff cooldowns available
• Add the artifact active ability to the talent tree
• Look for opportunities to update/improve the talent tree

The noteworthy change to the baseline spec is that the self-buff cooldowns have been consolidated:

• Empower Rune Weapon has become what the Hungering Rune Weapon talent is on live (with tuning adjustments), granting 15% Haste and generating 1 Rune and 5 Runic Power instantly and every 5 sec for 20 sec, on a 2 min cooldown (down from 3 min on live). Now that Empower Rune Weapon is on the global cooldown, the full 6 Runes it instantly provided always felt a bit like you were wasting it – shifting it to resources over time to add to a pretty full rotation made sense.
• Pillar of Frost has been removed baseline. Since the knockback immunity portion of it was moved to Death's Advance, Pillar ended up being a pretty bland 20% Strength buff. We’ve renamed the talent Obliteration into Pillar of Frost to keep that name around on the spec.

The next build you’ll see will be just slightly out of date in regards to the Frost talent tree – the most current version is outlined below. Any talents not described are mostly unchanged.

Level 56 row: Inexorable Assault, Icy Talons, Shattering Strikes – primarily single-target/constant value

Inexorable Assault has been redesigned – it now periodically grants a buff (stacks to 5) that causes your next Obliterate to deal additional Frost damage. This additional damage is a flat, separate add to Obliterate’s damage and doesn’t benefit from Killing Machine (you aren’t intended to play around it + Killing Machine). The talent is mostly passive, but with the added bonus of providing some benefit at the start of an encounter or when you’re off-target.

Level 57 row: Runic Attenuation, Murderous Efficiency, Horn of Winter – this row adds resources/speeds up to the rotation

Runic Attenuation now generates 3 Runic Power on a more controllable procs per minute system, instead of generating 1 Runic Power on autoattacks (which didn’t have a good way for us to tune it). It should still feel like pretty consistent resource generation.

Level 58 row: Winter is Coming, Asphyxiate, Blinding Sleet – crowd control

Asphyxiate has replaced Abomination's Might in the talent tree, and now all 3 Death Knight specs have access to this single-target stun cooldown. Abomination's Might wasn’t very reliable and wasn’t even always desirable as a random single-target proc stun.

Level 60 row: Avalanche, Gathering Storm, Glacial Advance – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets

Avalanche has been redesigned to trigger from casting Howling Blast with Rime active, and is intended to be the simple passive option on the row.

Level 75 row: Permafrost, Wraith Walk, Death Pact

Death Pact has replaced the version of Inexorable Assault from live, giving both damage specs access to this survivability talent.

Level 90 row: Freezing Fog, Frostscythe, Frostwyrm’s Fury – primarily AOE/scales up with #targets

Freezing Fog is planned to be unchanged from live. The version you’re going to see soon includes an additional mechanic (which is probably being removed), that was added in order to make it fit better when it was on a different talent row.

Frostwyrm’s Fury is the artifact active, Sindragosa's Fury, with a slightly different name so that it doesn’t sound too similar to Breath of Sindragosa. Its cooldown is 3 min instead of 5 min (like the artifact active) – a shorter cooldown as a talent feels better to be usable more often and allows it to be better tuned against its competitors without requiring a large damage reduction in PvP due to being a huge single damage event.

Level 100 row: Icecap, Pillar of Frost, Breath of Sindragosa – Damage modifiers/works in most situations

Icecap now affects Empower Rune Weapon instead of Pillar of Frost, reducing its cooldown by 3 sec (pending tuning) when it triggers.

Obliteration (the talent on live) has been renamed Pillar of Frost as mentioned earlier, and has the same mechanics on the same 1.5 min cooldown.

Breath of Sindragosa is mostly unchanged. However, worth noting is that its 2 min cooldown lines up better with the new Empower Rune Weapon, which now also has a 2 min cooldown.

Note: Runic Empowerment has been tuned down from 1.8%->1.5%. The spec often just had way too much resources to spend. This is the spec’s primary pacing controller and we’ll continue adjusting it in the future to what feels good.

Thanks for all the continued feedback.

Level	Talent 1	Talent 2	Talent 3
56	Inexorable Assault	Icy Talons	Shattering Strikes
57	Runic Attenuation	Murderous Efficiency	Horn of Winter
58	Winter is Coming	Asphyxiate *new*	Blinding Sleet
60	Icecap	Avalanche	Glacial Advance
75	Permafrost	Wraith Walk *new*	Death Pact *new*
90	Gathering Storm	Frostscythe	Frostwyrm's Fury *new*
100	Freezing Fog	Pillar of Frost	Breath of Sindragosa

Druid

Balance

• Starlord is now a level 75 talent (was 90).
• Twin Moons is now a level 90 talent (was 75).

Level	Talent 1	Talent 2	Talent 3
15	Nature's Balance	Warrior of Elune	Force of Nature
30	Tiger Dash	Renewal	Wild Charge
45	Feral Affinity	Guardian Affinity	Restoration Affinity
60	Mighty Bash	Mass Entanglement	Typhoon
75	Soul of the Forest	Starlord	Incarnation: Chosen of Elune
90	Stellar Drift	Twin Moons *new*	Stellar Flare
100	Shooting Stars	Fury of Elune	New Moon *new*

Priest

Holy

• Apotheosis (level 100 talent) updated:
  • Enter a pure Holy form for 20 sec. (down from 30 sec), increasing the cooldown reductions to your Holy Words by 300% (up from 200%) and reducing their cost by 100%. Cooldown: 2 min (down from 3 min).

Blizzard (Source)

We've seen a lot of feedback on Apotheosis (and level 100 generally) after the talent swap. 2 changes in next build:

--Duration 20s and cooldown 2min (from 30s and 3min). The shorter cooldown is likely worth a lot more than 10s of added duration, in terms of how you usually want to use it to deliver strong healing for a situation that doesn't necessarily last 30 seconds.

--The bonus is +300% rather than +200%. This matches the strength that it has on live when Light of the Naaru is taken. Apotheosis didn't need to be weakened outright, and can have the synergy with Light of the Naaru baked in, now that you can't take both.

Shadow

• Dark Ascension (level 100 talent) got updated.
  • Immediately activates a new Voidform, then releases an explosive blast of pure void energy, causing [ 160% of Spell Power ] Shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yds of your target.
  • Cooldown: 60 sec (down from 1.5 min), Generates 50 Insanity (up from 30).

Warlock

Affliction

• Deathbolt is now a level 15 talent (was 90).
• Haunt is now a level 90 talent (was 15).

Blizzard (Source)

We're going to swap Haunt (was lvl 15, now lvl 90) with Deathbolt (was lvl 90, now lvl 15) in the talent tree in the next build. This fulfills a desire (mentioned several times here) to be able to play a Nightfall + Haunt or Drain Soul + Haunt build, which a lot of players think is fun (and is fair feedback).

The reason we made the last round of talent swaps, which saw Nightfall and Drain Soul move to level 15, and Shadow Embrace and Haunt move to level 90, was to satisfy a different desire (as players mentioned even in this thread) to allow Drain Soul and Grimoire of Sacrifice to be taken together, as both are identity, feel, and greatly gameplay changing. That also seemed reasonable.

Separately, that also had the benefit of allowing Nightfall and Drain Soul to be acquirable earlier at lvl 15, since they are both great leveling talents and good to have early.

To make room for Nightfall and Drain Soul on the lvl 15 row, we chose to move Shadow Embrace and Deathbolt together (as opposed to Shadow Embrace and Haunt) because Shadow Embrace and Haunt are pretty similar - they both provide a damage taken debuff with or near 100% uptime. That's still true, but it seems better overall to live with that, look for opportunities to improve/replace Shadow Embrace in the future, and support a Nightfall + Haunt build.

So the new layout looks like:

Row 15: Nightfall, Drain Soul, Deathbolt
Row 90: Shadow Embrace, Haunt, Grimoire of Sacrifice

On the topic of talent tree layouts in general for all specs - it's always a list of competing, sometimes contradictory desires, all of which are valid to some varying degrees:

• "All talents on a row should be equal"
• "Some talents should better in some situations"
• "Talents on the same row shouldn't clearly be better in single target or AOE vs other talents on the same row"
• "Difficult to use talents should be a little more rewarding than easy to use talents"
• "Talents shouldn't be too similar to each other"
• "Players should be allowed to pick whatever talent they find the most fun"
• "The strongest talent should probably be the most fun one"

And so on. It’s often not possible to satisfy all requirements, so it becomes sort of finding the best configuration that satisfies as many desires as possible, and iterating on improvements for the future.

As usual, we're always open to feedback.

Level	Talent 1	Talent 2	Talent 3
15	Nightfall	Drain Soul *new*	Deathbolt *new*aw
30	Writhe in Agony	Absolute Corruption	Siphon Life
45	Demon Skin	Burning Rush	Dark Pact
60	Sow the Seeds	Phantom Singularity	Vile Taint *new*
75	Darkfury *new*	Mortal Coil	Demonic Circle
90	Shadow Embrace *new*	Haunt	Grimoire of Sacrifice
100	Soul Conduit	Creeping Death *new*	Dark Soul: Misery *new*

Warrior

Arms

• Trauma (level 45 talent) removed.
• Fervor of Battle is now a level 45 talent (was 90).
• Massacre is a new level 45 talent, in place of Massacre (functionality updated).
  • Execute is now usable on targets below 35% health.
• Avatar is now a level 90 talent (was 45).

Blizzard (Source)

In the next Beta build, you'll see a few changes for Arms that should address the Rage economy issues pointed out in threads like this one. The baseline pacing is slightly lower than intended, and talents can cause too big of a swing in either direction (slowing down or speeding up the pace).

• Rage generation from auto attacks is increased by ~16%.
• Tactician's proc chance is increased to 1.4% per Rage spent (it was 0.9%).

This adds more button presses to the rotation regardless of your talent build, and pushes Overpower more than other abilities to avoid creeping too close to "Slam-spam" territory. The moment we’re trying to eliminate as much as possible is the, “I have enough Rage to Slam right now, but I don’t know if I’ll have enough to Mortal Strike afterwards unless I have a swing timer.” These changes add enough Rage, and enough Overpower procs, to make that a rarer occurrence.

However, pumping more Rage into the rotation doesn't solve the problems with certain talent setups that have been highlighted here. There are a handful of Rage management talents that have big impacts on the spec's feel and flow, but it is easy to accidentally put together a build that is either starved or flooded.

• Avatar and Fervor of Battle swap places (Avatar to 90, Fervor to 45).
• Trauma removed, and replaced with the new Massacre design: "Execute is now usable against targets below 35% health."

This makes the purpose of each row clearer. 45 is all about spending more Rage. The row will have a more predictable impact on total button presses over time, while each talent still has a distinct impact on moment-to-moment gameplay.

Similarly, the 90 row is now all about cooldowns. Putting Avatar and Deadly Calm against each other limits the pacing swing between different talent setups, as well as lowering overall burst potential (something at which Arms already excels). Having strengths is important, but pushing them too far can lead to feeling like you’re a one-trick pony.

Finally, two more related tweaks:

• Skullsplitter generates 20 Rage (was 30 Rage).
• Anger Management no longer affects Deadly Calm. It now only affects Colossus Smash/Warbreaker, and Bladestorm.

Skullsplitter was adding too much activity, relative to the other options on the 15 row. Even with this change, it is still the most active choice for players who enjoy being closer to GCD-locked.

Rather than adding Avatar to Anger Management, we've opted to keep it simpler on the surface while still having all three 90 talents interact with it in different ways: In For The Kill is directly buffed, Avatar feeds extra Rage into Anger Management, and Deadly Calm makes it easier to set up for the more regular Colossus Smash windows.

Oh -- we're also trying out a different animation for Overpower. 

As always, thanks for the feedback and discussion!

Level	Talent 1	Talent 2	Talent 3
15	War Machine *new*	Sudden Death	Skullsplitter *new*
30	Double Time	Impending Victory *new*	Storm Bolt
45	Massacre *new*	Fervor of Battle	Rend
60	Second Wind	Bounding Stride	Defensive Stance
75	Collateral Damage  *new*	Warbreaker *new*	Cleave
90	In For The Kill *new*	Avatar	Deadly Calm *new*
100	Anger Management	Dreadnaught *new*	Ravager

Fury

• Avatar (level 45 talent) removed.
• Bloodbath (level 45 talent) removed.
• Wrecking Ball (level 90 talent) removed.
• Sudden Death is now a level 45 talent.
• Furious Slash is now a level 45 talent (was 90).
• Inner Rage is now a level 45 talent (was 90).
• Bladestorm is now a level 90 talent (was 100).
• Dragon Roar is now a level 90 talent (was 100).
• Meat Cleaver is now a level 90 talent (was 100).
• Anger Management is now a level 100 talent.
• Reckless Abandon is now a level 100 talent (was 45).
• Siegebreaker is a new level 100 talent.

Level	Talent 1	Talent 2	Talent 3
15	War Machine	Endless Rage	Fresh Meat
30	Double Time	Impending Victory *new*	Storm Bolt
45	Inner Rage	Sudden Death *new*	Furious Slash *new*
60	Furious Charge	Bounding Stride	Warpaint
75	Carnage	Massacre *new*	Frothing Berserker
90	Meat Cleaver *new*	Dragon Roar	Bladestorm
100	Reckless Abandon	Anger Management *new*	Siegebreaker *new*

Previous Talent Changes

• Beta Build 26734 Talent Changes
• Beta Build 26707 Talent Changes
• Beta Build 26624 Talent Changes
• Beta Build 26567 Talent Changes
• Beta Build 26530 Talent Changes

[Yridaa 490]

Why do they keep juggling these talents every few weeks and months (Looking at you for example, Warrior!). Do they even have a concrete plan at all or is it just "Let's just try this and see what happens"?

 

Where's the CREATIVITY and PASSION at?

[Reullapool 3]

6 minutes ago, Yridaa said:

Why do they keep juggling these talents every few weeks and months (Looking at you for example, Warrior!). Do they even have a concrete plan at all or is it just "Let's just try this and see what happens"?

 

Where's the CREATIVITY and PASSION at?

I think the reason is that they have followed community's suggestions for expansions now and they've lost a bit reasons and scope of talents etc. Their internal team are more worried about customer feedback that gameplay integrity. That's imho, the reason.

[Yridaa 490]

2 hours ago, Reullapool said:

I think the reason is that they have followed community's suggestions for expansions now and they've lost a bit reasons and scope of talents etc. Their internal team are more worried about customer feedback that gameplay integrity. That's imho, the reason.

I like this post. I think you nailed it.

[007 0]

Looking forward to hurry up to update
 

[Allseye 96]

4 hours ago, Yridaa said:

I like this post. I think you nailed it.

My opinion: yes and no:

Yes - Blizzard is listenting to community and has lost their path.

No - They just listen due to missing understanding/creativity for warriors. It's not just Arms-Warrior, Fury and Prot it's the same. As you stated - where has the creativity and passion gone?

I dont say it's an easy job. In fact, I think it's quite difficult. Do class-design and fit it into PvE (solo-, grp- and raid-environment) as well as PvP (open world, arena, bg)...this is not easy at all. So i don't jugde them by shifting around the talents and try their best. At least they're trying something.

[PatrickHenry 293]

10 hours ago, Reullapool said:

I think the reason is that they have followed community's suggestions for expansions now and they've lost a bit reasons and scope of talents etc. Their internal team are more worried about customer feedback that gameplay integrity. That's imho, the reason.

That falls under the problem of "damned if you do, damned if you dont," sprinkled withh some "catch 22".

Dont listen to the community, be berated in the forums for it.  Listen to the community and the specs and classes start to lose feel or function.  

Sometimes they need to grab the old Almonds and try something new.  Freshen it up.  Still listen but it is their game after all.  

I like the approach thusfar.  A lot of shuffling, but reimagining a class/spec/talents cannot be that easy, then balancing afterwards....

[Seksi 208]

Personally I think all the classes that are getting blue attention are improving a lot and we are getting great explanations on changes too. At this point the only thing dev team can be blamed on is the decision to remove artifacts (which obviously made the resulting class gameplay extremely different and hollowed out in general but is essential to create new gameplay) and the inability to be everywhere at once.

Classes that did not get much design / blue post attention yet (shamans in general, non-boomkin druids and non-protection paladins, for example) tend to be the worse off right now compared to Legion as they mostly received nerfs to their (over?)powerful abilities without actual redesigns to give new direction to the classes and thus play mostly the same as Legion but weak(er).