"31 Point" Talent Trees are Here!

When I heard about how these were coming the other day I first thought to myself, "Noes! That last blog I just wrote was a lie then!". Luckily I wasn't entirely off and now I can give a more accurate description.

OVERVIEW OF TALENTS

The new talents trees are smaller, you have less points to spend, so this makes sense. I am unsure of the rate at which you gain talents points to spend. After spending my 36 points I had at level 80, I had a message at the top of my tree informing me that my next talent point would be "earned at level 81". (Yeah I still haven't leveled yet) The new trees also force a "primary spec". By that I mean it is no longer possible to be classified as "Hybrid" (take a look at some WoW Armory profiles).


"31 POINT" TALENT TREES

I put the 31 in quotes simply because you do not only have 31 points to spend at the max level. However the 31 points are what you MUST spend in a tree before you are even allowed to think about putting points into another tree. (Personally, that is going to force me have to re-think my dual wield tanking). The other trees will remain grayed out until you have spent 31 talent points in the tree you chose from the first talent menu.

Stat Changes on Items and How it Affects Tanking

This blog is mostly for the lovely Demeternoth to better explain/show how the stats on items will affect tanking. (Be sure to check out her blog as well and she should have some more detailed information coming from the Beta soon!)

Basically I noticed after doing a couple quests (and already replacing my heroic and and non-heroic tier gear with greens) that there has been an overall change in item stats. Overall I think the change can be good albeit being extremely annoying on another level.

Before I go on I'd like to mention a small detail

The Effect of Cataclysm on my Death Knight Tank Thus Far

I know that most people are probably hoping for (and expecting) specific details about high-end etc when they look up information on Cataclysm, let me just say right now that this isn't where I'm going with these blogs.

While I may include some specific details about items etc, my blogs will generally be from the perspective of a casual player (keep in mind I'm the mother of a 2 year old and have various other online duties I attend to in my gaming communities) to give and overall opinion on things.
Sadly I haven't had the opportunity so far to play as much as I would like due to time constraints and server stability issues for the EU server but I have already formed some thoughts an opinions.

After a lot of problems even copying my character into the Beta (due to language selection affecting account and DNS cache issues for a reloading transfer page that did nothing), I logged in eager to explore what I could right away.

Death Knight Tanking: Frost Dual Wield Spec à la Raevn

(I'm aware that Blood is the main spec for raid tanking nowadays and will be the standard in the next expansion, however I'm doing this with the immediate future in mind)

Background:

A couple weeks ago I decided that my "alt" (Landriana, Elemental Shaman) had quite surpassed my main (Raevn, Frost Death Knight) to the point of humiliation and shame in regards to gear and instances completed. To where technically Raevn should have been considered as my alt.

I'll admit that it was easy to let myself slide. It's not that I didn't like tanking or my Death Knight, it was just that it's WAY easier to come along in instances as a DPS. When something goes wrong it's not the DPS that is blamed (rarely, even when it IS their fault) and I basically get to sit back, shut up and just follow along killing things. It's much more pleasant than running ahead marking mobs (which I'm really slow to do because of the drop down menu and my inability to move my mouse in a straight line, along with the fact that I keep forgetting to keybind the "skull" mark) while having some asshole keep yelling "Go! go!" at you.

So one day I decided to at least do my daily heroic to get some frost & triumph emblems, my gear wasn't (nor is it currently) the best, and didn't even include full tier 9. I felt pretty comfortable with tanking, the day I stopped playing my tank so much I was considered as "up there in gear"... however, the day I decided to resume gearing  I found out just how much I was in everyone's dust.