Cataclysm Talent Changes (General)

I know I'm a bit late to the party here, but I'd like to state how much I dislike the new, 31 point talents. The amount of freedom and customization the talent system has allowed was one of WoW's best features. It wasn't as deep as the AA system of EQ or EQ2, but still had enough depth that there were always a number of viable builds. Even in the "cookie cutter" specs most builds had 3-5 points of freedom in what they took.

When it was first announced that Cataclysm would have no new talents, but instead 5 more points allowing 51/21/x builds, I was psyched. There were so many cool combos I hoped to try out: Warlock SL/Meta, Rogue h4b/prep, etc. Even if you didn't want another 21p talent, 5 more points adds a TON of freedom to the build. All in all, a greater degree of freedom despite the fact that they weren't adding any 'new' talents.

Then they do an about-face, and say that they're cutting the trees back to Vanilla level, 31p. Furthermore, you MUST spend 31 in a tree before you can even branch out into a 2nd. That fact, combined with the removal of many talents, means that you're basically choosing a spec at level 10 and then fleshing it out with very little choice until level 70 or so. Additionally, you no longer get a talent point every level, which will make each of the games 85 levels feel even less important (removal of spell ranks only compounds this effect). That's not a huge deal to those of us who are already 80, but leveling has already felt tedious, and this is a change for the worse.

All in all I don't see the point in this change; they're dumbing down something that already wasn't difficult. If you're bad and can't make your own talent spec, you can look up a guildmate on the armory, or just check EJ. But apparently, that's too much work for the average WoW-tard.