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Ok, I’ve thought it over some, and figure I should write down my desired warcraft specs for current and planned chars (kind of like I’ve done with respect to CoV in the past).

Allaryin

Al is my main. He’s a lvl 60 dwarven hunter who spent most of his life as a marksmanship spec before they rebalanced the talent trees and I switched to a mostly survival (think trap and crit) spec. I lose trueshot aura, but I gain +15% agi and numerous other goodies. I’ve got like 18% crit now.

Since Blizzard hates hunters (or at least always saves them for an afterthought), they’re the only class w/o BC talents announced. So, I won’t comment on my plans for Al at this time. Chances are high that I’ll be grabbing a few more marksmanship talents and dropping a few points from survival. I might possibly dip 5-10 points into beast spec for some improved base aspects, depending on what happens.

Chokuretsu

Choku is my primary alt. She’s lvl 39 gnomish warlock at the moment with heavy affliction and some destruction tendancies. I’m gonna continue working with her up until 50 before resuming the quest for exalted Gnomeregan and Stormpike faction on Al. Once Al has his rep toys, Choku makes the final push for 60.

I am giddy about the new chances to warlock talents in the expansion. They’re making affliction spec even happier – throwing out lots of junk ranks and generally happifying the tree. Choku becomes the imp-draining, dot-happy font of infinite mana.

Affliction Talents – 41 point(s)

• Suppression – 5/5
• Improved Corruption – 5/5
• Improved Drain Soul – 2/2
• Improved Curse of Agony – 2/2
• Fel Concentration – 5/5
• Amplify Curse – 1/1
• Grim Reach – 2/2
• Empowered Corruption – 3/3
• Siphon Life – 1/1
• Curse of Exhaustion – 1/1
• Shadow Mastery – 5/5
• Contagion – 5/5
• Dark Pact – 1/1
• Improved Howl of Terror – 2/2
• Unstable Affliction – 1/1

More DOTs. When I’m not dotting, I’m draining something. When I’m neither dotting or draining, I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing. I might be spamming destruction spells for extra DPS or something.

Drain Soul is amazing in the expansion. Not only does the spell (which is already a fairly cheap form of damage output in addition to the whole shard production thing) become resistant to interruption with Fel Concentration, it gets Improved Drain Soul which turns it into a huge mana heal (as if I need more of those ) as well as reducing threat generation from Affliction spells – which never hurts.

I’m utterly addicted to Siphon Life. I can’t imagine playing a warlock without it It’s like a hunter w/o Aimed Shot. Plus, it adds a fourth dot to my cycle.

Amplify Curse didn’t wow me very much at low levels when I got it on my way to acquiring Siphon for the first time. But at high levels, it should be pretty nice – especially when combined with Improved Curse of Agony.

Curse of Exhaustion is horrible right now. But, by turning it into a single talent spell (in stead of the 3 or 4 talents required to make it useful at present)… I think I like adding it to my fear chain.

The new tier 9 talent, Unstable Affliction is just one more DOT on the pile. It also carries with it the benefit inherent in many of the new BC spells in that it backfires when dispelled. I’m all for that.

Dark Pact is the real reason I’m going heavy affliction spec, however. It turns my pets into mana batteries…

Demonology Talents – 17 point(s)

• Improved Imp – 3/3
• Demonic Embrace – 5/5
• Fel Intellect – 3/3
• Fel Domination – 1/1
• Demonic Aegis – 3/3
• Master Summoner – 2/2

Ok, general idea here is to always have a maxxed out and above all passive Imp on hand. They get buckets of mana. Fel Intellect gives them more. With the imp on passive, they just sit and regenerate mana for me to Dark Pact away.

Demonic Embrace and the imp’s Blood Pact (with +30% bonus) give me tons more hp to power spells when the Dark Pact cycle proves insufficient. Throw some heavy runecloth bandages into the mix and I’m regenerating an additional 2000 mana every minute.

Master Summoner and Fel Domination make it easy for me to get my imp back in the odd event that it somehow gets into combat and dies.

Destruction Talents – 3 point(s)

• Cataclysm – 3/5

Spell cost reduction is spell cost reduction. And I figure the major reason I don’t always use destruction spells (aside from their being possible to interrupt forever) is their cost. If I’m generating tons of mana, I figure it can’t hurt to decrease the cost of my spamming spells just a bit more.

Kyaneos

Kyan used to be my primary alt until I rolled Choku. She’s the other char that transferred with me from Sargeras -> Detheroc -> Terenas. Been around for a while. Never gonna purge char, but don’t play her very seriously either. Human paladin. Currently lvl 27 or so and built for retribution with a big enchanted hammer of kaboomitude.

I expect to resume work on Kyan once Choku hits 60 and concentrate on grinding her to at least 40 (A paladin w/o a free horse is hardly a paladin at all, don’tcha know).

Once she hits 40, however, I’m planning on shifting gears from a solo sort of zombie slaughterhouse on legs build to a a very balanced sort of unkillable healer build.

Holy Talents – 35 point(s)

• Divine Intellect – 5/5
• Spiritual Focus – 5/5
• Healing Light – 3/3
• Aura Mastery – 1/1
• Unyielding Faith – 2/2
• Illumination – 5/5
• Pure of Heart – 3/3
• Divine Favor – 1/1
• Holy Power – 5/5
• Blessed Life – 5/5

Aura Mastery is kind of neat, it’s a +10 yard bonus to aura radius. That means I’m more likely to be covering my hunter if he’s off in a corner away from me, but more importantly, it means that I can stand back and heal from full range and still benefit my melee party members with my aura.

Illumination means that critical heals are free, Divine Favor and Holy Power increase the odds of my getting those free heals by a great deal. Since paladins get so little mana compared to other healing classes, free heals are a good idea.

Blessed Life is the big talent for my whole ‘indestructable’ theme to the healing paladin. It’s essentially a permanent 5% reduction to all damage taken. Ever. From any source. Yay!

Protection Talents – 16 point(s)

• Improved Devotion Aura – 5/5
• Toughness – 5/5
• Blessing of Kings – 1/1
• Anticipation – 5/5

Redoubt is nice, but Improved Devotion translates into more reliable damage reduction – and it helps my party when I’m using it. At level 60, Devotion is worth 735 AC before the talent. That makes this talent worth 294 additional AC to everyone in your party.

Toughness is a no brainer if I want not to take damage, as is Anticipation.

And Blessing of Kings is great to have on hand since I’m already taking Anticipation.

Retribution Talents – 10 point(s)

• Improved Blessing of Might – 5/5
• Deflection – 5/5

Deflection means 5% more parryable attacks that don’t hit me. If you’re keeping score… I’m really not taking any damage by this point.

Llamedos

Llammy is my NE druid. He was created with the intention of giving my wife somebody to party with w/o powerleveling her. What actually happened was that I managed to maintain the character for a while – until she got a day off from work and ground 4 or 5 levels in my absence. She’s lvl 28 now. Llammy is still 12

So, he’s absolute last priority for me. If I manage to hit all of my other targets before BC comes out, he’s planned as a hardcore balance spec nuke. Think mage in platemail to go along with my paladin.

Balance Talents – 47 point(s)

• Improved Wrath – 5/5
• Improved Moonfire – 5/5
• Natural Weapons – 5/5
• Omen of Clarity – 1/1
• Nature’s Reach – 2/2
• Vengeance – 5/5
• Lunar Guidance – 3/3
• Nature’s Grace – 1/1
• Moonglow – 3/3
• Moonfury – 5/5
• Balance of Power – 2/2
• Dreamstate – 3/3
• Moonkin Form – 1/1
• Twilight’s Wrath – 5/5
• Force of Nature – 1/1

The whole point of this char is Moonkin Form. And in the expansion, they’re buffing it way up. The biggest happiness here is that the form now gives a bonus of 150% to attack power and gives melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana. Combine with the 5 point Natural Weapons pre-req for Omen of Clarity… and OoC suddenly becomes very viable and useful.

The rest of the balance talents are pretty self-explanatory. I want mana, and I want to cast lots of hard hitting spells with that mana. And, of course, Force of Nature plays right into my whole summon addiction.

Restoration Talents – 14 point(s)

• Improved Mark of the Wild – 5/5
• Nature’s Focus – 5/5
• Reflection – 3/3
• Insect Swarm – 1/1

The real reason I’m taking any resto talents at all is for the Reflection mana regen increase. Nature’s Focus is kind of a no-brainer since I’d probably be caned for not taking it, and Insect Swarm is a nice cheap DOT to use while I’m healing people in caster form.

Omnia

When BC launches, my family is planning on making an army of blood elf priests. I’m still very torn on the subject, but will most probably be building a horde priest (either BE or undead who just levels in BE territory with them, not sure yet) to join them (my current largest horde char is Arbor, the lvl 18 cow warrior).

Since we’re gonna be 4 or 5 priests in a little war party of infinite healing, I’m planning on making the char 100% with support of other priests in mind. That said, we’re looking at the disciplined feedback priest, subject to tuning based on experiences in the group.

Discipline Talents – 38 point(s)

• Unbreakable Will – 5/5
• Improved Power Word: Fortitude – 2/2
• Improved Power Word: Shield – 3/3
• Martyrdom – 2/2
• Inner Focus – 1/1
• Meditation – 3/3
• Improved Inner Fire – 3/3
• Mental Agility – 5/5
• Mental Strength – 5/5
• Divine Spirit – 1/1
• Improved Divine Spirit – 2/2
• Power Infusion – 1/1
• Reflective Shield – 5/5

Divine Spirit is the big one here. I figure if we’re gonna have a full gang of priests, somebody may as well grab this. A 30 minute guaranteed +Spirit buff to everyone in the group means tons more mana. I’ll be rushing for this talent at level 30. That’s right, it trumps Healing Focus (since others will be able to heal me).

That’s the other thing, I figure if some priest has got to tank, it may as well be the one who’s already going deep into Discipline. So, I’m avoiding some of the more obvious threat reduction talents in favor of making myself slightly more able to stand still and survive getting hit a bunch.

Holy Talents – 23 point(s)

• Healing Focus – 2/2
• Improved Renew – 3/3
• Spell Warding – 5/5
• Holy Nova – 1/1
• Blessed Recovery – 3/3
• Inspiration – 3/3
• Holy Reach – 2/2
• Improved Healing – 1/3
• Spirit of Redemption – 1/1
• Spiritual Guidance – 2/5

And when I DO wind up dying, I get to play Spirit of Redemption to keep the other priests alive so at least one of them is left to rez me

Adryn

When BC lands, I’ve always planned on rolling a Draenei. I’ve been ranting about this one for like a year now And I’ve finally decided that I need a draenei mage. Because, well, nothing says lovin like 7 feet of electric blue death with a free heal over time self-buff

I’ve always said that mages need summons, and since they’re finally getting water elementals in the expansion… (even if they are only temporary summons ) AND since big blue frost mage really works for me on an aesthetic level, the choice here is pretty obvious.

Since mages are probably the class with which I am least conversant, this build idea is extremely tentative here. I was actually thinking about going heavy arcane spec, just because nobody ever really does… but I’m addicted to summons.

Frost Talents – 42 point(s)

• Improved Frostbolt – 5/5
• Elemental Precision – 3/3
• Ice Shards – 5/5
• Improved Frost Nova – 2/2
• Piercing Ice – 3/3
• Cold Snap – 1/1
• Arctic Reach – 2/2
• Frost Channeling – 3/3
• Shatter – 5/5
• Ice Block – 1/1
• Winter’s Chill – 5/5
• Ice Barrier – 1/1
• Arctic Winds – 5/5
• Summon Water Elemental – 1/1

My only thought with the frost talents right now is getting criticals, and lots of them. And, since I’m gonna be generating tons of crits, I need to mitigate my threat production as much as possible while still doing obscene damage… and need to be able to survive when I do wind up pulling aggro.

And it has a summon. Have I mentioned that I really like summons?

Arcane Talents – 19 point(s)

• Arcane Subtlety – 2/2
• Arcane Focus – 3/5
• Magic Absorption – 5/5
• Arcane Concentration – 5/5
• Arcane Fortitude – 1/1
• Arcane Meditation – 3/3

I had to choose between 20 points in arcane or in fire. Since I was already planning on going arcane spec, that helped sway my decision. But really, the few cheap arcane talents really make for a happy mage. Fire is just more dps

Arcane Subtlety and Arcane Focus mean more of my spells hit when I cast them, and that I have the option of using arcane nukes in stead of ice when I need to tone down the aggro production.

Magic Absorption and Arcane Fortitude increase my general survivability (along the same vein of the protective frost spells) and I’m not gonna complain about the mana healed when I resist a spell.

Arcane Concentration means clearcasting for 10% of my nukes. Which really means 10% overall reduction in mana cost for all damage spells. Add Arcane Meditation for the continued regen while casting, and I’ve got enough juice to hammer on things for a good while (and with as many ice crits as they’re liable to suffer, it doesn’t actually have to be all that long).

Other Chars

I’ve mentioned that I have a tauren warrior. I don’t see much point in discussing his spec, if he ever really advances much further. He’s a cow, with armour. He’s gonna be a tank (which would be kind of fun with 3 BE priests for backup).

I’ve also got a low level shaman, but I don’t feel any compulsion to advance the char further and will gladly saccrifice him in order to make room for my priest or mage