Blizzard Entertainment announced last week that the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion would feature reduced talent trees to “concentrate the coolness” of each tree. This week the WoW team released their new trees for beta testers, and published an overview of the company’s vision for talents.
Players can now choose a (re-trainable) tree specialization at level 10. This will give the character some of the attributes of their tree of choice immediately, rather than the current system of needing enough levels (and attribute points) to really see a difference in playstyle. Once a player has put 31 points in a tree, reaching the last rank of talents, the other two trees open up for support talents.
Putting points in a tree will activate some Mastery bonuses, or passive stat boosts. Mastery is a new concept for Cataclysm, and Blizzard does not seem quite sure yet of exactly how it will be implemented. There are three Mastery bonuses per talent tree (although we don’t know what they are yet), and high-end Cataclysm gear will also feature a +Mastery stat.
This is all a work in progress, of course, and the talent trees in particular are likely to change many more times between now and the official release of Cataclysm. Players with questions about the new trees or the Mastery system can perhaps get some answers straight from the source at the WoW Developer Chat on Twitter tomorrow.