Talent specializations can be really confusing; especially to the relatively new player. Even for those of us who have been around a while, there doesn’t seem to be any right answer for “what’s the best build for _____?” So we’re going to talk about talents in general terms and then we’ll draw some conclusions.

Every character has three talent tabs. Each one of these tabs has around 20-25 buttons. Each of these buttons represents an active or passive skill for your character. You are given 1 point for every level starting at 2 points for level 10, for a total of 61 points to spend in these talent trees. Where you put those points will make a huge difference in how you should play your character. With virtually unlimited variations to choose from it can be really tough to choose how to spend your talent points. We’ll help shed a little light on that right now.

It all boils down to this: how do you like to play? That one factor should be the ultimate decision-maker for you when it comes to choosing your talent tree, as well as how you allocate the individual points. Do you prefer healing or fighting? Do you like crowd control or a ton of DPS? Ranged attacks or melee? Once you get to know your character and class, you’ll have a much better idea how it all fits together.

In my opinion there are really only two ways to go to get the very most out of any build. This may be a little controversial, but here goes. You should either go all-in on a single tree and super-specialize with 41+ points, or go 30/31 in two trees. It really depends on what the people you play with need you to contribute to regular instance runs, PVP battles, or raid groups. Let’s look at those two options.

In order to really have the best heals or be a fabulous tank, you simply must go at least to 41 points in those trees. If your guild needs an uber tank, you’re going to have to really go for it, or decide to let someone else play that role. For maximum healing, the 41st point is usually a “can’t live without skill.” Do a little looking on wowhead and Thottbot as well as a google search and see what build others are using in that tree. Alakhazam has a list at that shows the breakdowns of what its members use at http://wow.allakhazam.com/dyn/talfreq.html you can see from this list most druids (2.43%) use a 0/0/61 build for restoration. This just proves my point that in order to do one tree well, you’re going to spend nearly all of your points there. This list is terrific because it lets you look at what hundreds of other players are choosing.

Another great resource for looking at builds if you are not an expert already is the WoW Wikki site. On the Class page here: http://www.wowwiki.com/Class there is a window on the right side of the screen where you can get very detailed information and comments on how thousands of other people play that class, the builds they use, and which builds are better suited for PVE, PVP and raids.

Now that you’ve seen the first theory, let’s take a peek at another one that might make you even more valuable overall, primarily for DPS classes and builds. On this page: http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=472 someone was doing an analysis of hunter DPS builds, and the end result was fascinating. In almost every case the builds with a 30/31 allocation did the most damage. This happened because of talent synergies. While those who played Blizzard’s other blockbuster, Diablo 2 are familiar with the term, it’s not used directly in WoW, but that doesn’t keep it from happening.

On this page we see that a 0/21/30 build was almost identical in DPS to a 0/31/20 build (this is a very old post on Allakhazam before the expansion so bear with me). Blizzard does a great job of trying to balance their games so that players never overpower each other, and that no single build ever lasts if it thoroughly outshines all the others. This leads to parity and variety, so that all players become fairly equal, and players can play the same toon in a variety of styles depending on the situation.

So you might experiment with a 31/30 build. From my testing it always turns out that any two trees end up with talent synergies in the 20 point level, meaning they make each other stronger. The hard part about this build is choosing the 61st point. There will be one really great skill in all three trees you’ll have to choose from with that last point. It can be a really tough choice to make, because it will have a great effect on your play style.

Hunters, for example can go with BM/MM with the last point in either bestial wrath (big red kitty) or true shot aura. If he goes MM/Survival he’ll have to choose between true shot aura and Wyvern Sting, and for BM/Surv the choice will be bestial wrath or Wyvern. All three of those skills are useful; it will just depend on how that player wants to play. I’ve said before that very few hunters go survival tree, not even 1%. But I’ve also seen a survival hunter make all the difference in a high level run with great dps because his crit chance was around 29% with lethal shots, mortal shots and lightening reflexes. He would put on rapid fire and crit almost every 1.5 seconds to the tune of 1,400 to 1,800; it was insane. Plus he could chain trap like crazy, and put a mob to sleep before the fight ever began with wyvern sting. That means from one toon you got double the CC.

That’s what you get from a 30/31 build, versatility. You can do three or four things really well for your group and not be pigeonholed into just one thing. A 31/30 build is going to be primarily used for DPS builds, while a 41+ specialization may be more for healers and tanks. A good raid group needs both kinds: the super-specialized and the versatile. I think maybe I’ll do something really weird and go 30 beast mastery/31 survival just for kicks with my next hunter and see how it goes. Put a rogue to sleep for a bit and then let my cat go frenzy on them. No more stealth for you Mr. rogue, and enjoy the dots! Next, we’ll rant about instances.