One of the standout features of World of Warcraft's upcoming The War Within expansion is the Hero Talent Trees, an extra layer of frosting on Dragonflight's talent overhaul cake. They're tasteful, thematic additions to your core skills, intended to provide “an evergreen form of character development.”
Blizzard collected feedback in advance of the system's launch and gave players the opportunity to discuss four trees in December last year. Now there are eight more for build heads to talk about in the forum – and thank the light that they are. Someone has to worry about the numbers. Druids, Summoners, Paladins, Rogues, Warlocks, and Warriors all get a preview this time. You can read more about the complete trees Blizzard's official postbut here are the cliff notes.
For Druids, we have the Elune's Chosen (Balance, Guardian) and Wildstalker (Ferocity, Restoration) trees. One is about all things moon-related, while the other gives you better healing, big bleeds, and creepy parasitic tendrils to torment your enemies with – you know, in case it doesn't It would be terrible enough to be mauled by a big cat.
Open to augmentation and devastation evokers, the Scalecommander Evoker turns you into a walking mortar sentinel. Mass Eruption/Disintegration spreads your explosions across enemies while also marking them for explosive bombardments that can be triggered whenever you or your friends deal damage.
Paladins receive the Herald of the Sun (Holy, Retribution) and Templar (Protection, Retribution) trees. The former is about creating sunspots that destroy your enemies and heal your allies, while the latter is about hitting people very hard with hammers. All of them. You have a hammer that then calls other hammers down from the sky: once when you throw it, and then all of them two seconds for eight seconds. Hammer time is now 24/7, baby.
Offered for the Outlaw and Subtlety specializations, the Trickster Rogue is a lot of fun for a reason – it's about using Feint, a damage reduction tool. When you use Feint, your enemies will be hit with “invisible blades” that deal damage, reduce the damage you take from them, increase the critical hit chance of your finishing move, and so on. It's as if Blizzard just tied a carrot to the end of a stick and asked the analyzing masses to maybe do some damage control and help their healers.
Over in the Land of the Warlocks, the Diabolist adds a bit of a demonic flavor to the Destruction Warlocks, although it is available to both specs. Diabolic Ritual gives each Soul Shard you spend a chance to boost a smorgasbord of demons (one at a time so meter watchers can build rotations around it) as well as even more meteors carrying wild goblins.
My personal favorite, however, is the Colossus Warrior, which is open to weapons and protection players. This thing is based on the Shockwave ability, which Blizzard promises will make it easier for you to achieve through your class talents in The War Within. While there are a lot of fun, flavorful things (like launching your enemies into the air when you hit them with a shockwave), my top pick is Mountain of Muscle and Scars, an otherwise very boring node, which makes you do more and take less damage. Crucially, this also makes you 5% taller than everyone else. Forever.
It's such a slight increase that I doubt most players will even notice it at first glance, but You Find out that you are 5% taller than the average population and isn't that what matters?
