The Armory is a beautiful thing. I have been curious lately about talent distributions and talent popularity -- what 31/41 point talents are popular, and which ones aren't? The data is out there -- thanks to the Armory. The only challenge was mining it.

So, I wrote a program that looks up talent specs on Armory, and I talled information about 31 and 41 point talents.

My program pulls names from allakhazam's database, then looks them up on Armory. I'm only interested in level 70 players. I have 4170 players in my study. You can see the breakdown here:

Druids     552

Hunters    644

Mages      515

Paladins   422

Priests    511

Rogues     122

Shamans    296

Warlocks   570

Warriors   538

TOTAL     4170

I looked up roughly 1500 players for each class on allakhazam, then tried to find them on Armory. Some players exist on allakhazam but not Armory (perhaps they are inactive or deleted/transferred?) so the numbers didn't turn out exact. I don't know why rogues and shamans are less represented than the other classes.

I was interested in 4 things:

(A) What percentage of (class) has taken the 31 point talent in (tree)?
(B) What percentage of (class) put at least 31 points into (tree), but SKIPPED the 31 point talent?
(C) What percentage of (class) has taken the 41 point talent in (tree)?
(D) What percentage of (class) put at least 31 points into (tree), but didn't go for the 41 point talent?

Looking at the data below, we can answer these questions. Take Balance Druids, for example:

(A) 12.3% of all Druids have the 31 point balance talent (Moonkin Form).
(B) 0.5% of all Druids put 31 or more points into balance, but didn't take Moonkin Form.
(C) 9.4% of all Druids have the 41 point balance talent (Force of Nature).
(D) 3.4% ot all Druids put 31 or more points into balance, but didn't go for Force of Nature.

Here is the data, for all classes and trees:

Class/Tree         % Taken 31      % Skipped 31      % Taken 41      % Avoided 41

Druid/Balance	    12.3             0.5               9.4               3.4

Druid/Feral Combat    59.8             0.4              58.0               2.2

Druid/Restoration     24.5             0.7              19.9               5.3

Hunter/Beast Mastery  20.5             0.6              18.8               2.3

Hunter/Marksmanship   71.0             0.2              61.6               9.5

Hunter/Survival        3.1             1.9               1.1               3.9

Mage/Arcane           36.9             1.2               9.5              28.5

Mage/Fire             33.0             1.7              27.4               7.4

Mage/Frost            24.5             0.2              22.1               2.5

Paladin/Holy          64.0             1.4              49.8              15.6

Paladin/Protection    19.2             0.5              17.8               1.9

Paladin/Retribution   11.6             0.7              11.1               1.2

Priest/Discipline      8.4             3.3               3.1               8.6

Priest/Holy           13.3            40.5               9.4              44.4

Priest/Shadow         31.1             0.0              29.7               1.4

Rogue/Assassination   23.0             0.8              19.7               4.1

Rogue/Combat          41.8             0.8              34.4               8.2

Rogue/Subtlety         6.6             0.8               4.9               2.5

Shaman/Elemental      22.6             1.0              12.2              11.5

Shaman/Enhancement    34.1             1.7              27.7               8.1

Shaman/Restoration    38.5             1.0              36.8               0.7

Warlock/Affliction    39.5             3.0              30.4              12.1

Warlock/Demonology    32.5             2.1              28.8               5.8

Warlock/Destruction   17.5             1.4              12.3               6.7

Warrior/Arms          27.9             0.2              11.0              17.1

Warrior/Fury          12.6             0.7              10.2               3.2

Warrior/Protection    54.3             1.7              53.2               2.8

(Note: My program erroneously considered "Contagion" as the 31 point Affliction talent instead of Dark Pact; I will re-run the study later to correct it)

We can draw some conclusions from this.

What talent trees are the least popular?

Survival Hunters
Subtlety Rogues
Discipline Priests


What 31-point talents are the least popular amongst players already heavily invested in that tree?

Holy Priests
Discipline Priests
Affliction Warlocks


What 41-point talents are the least popular amongst players already heavily invested in that tree?

Holy Priests
Arcane Mages
Arms Warriors

I think the numbers for the Holy Priest tree stand out the most -- 40% of all priests are 31 points (or more) deep into the Holy tree, but DON'T have Lightwell. 44% of all priests are Holy but don't have Circle of Healing. These are some astounding numbers -- I don't see how Blizzard can ignore this and continue to believe our 31 point and 41 point talents are desirable.

Conclusions

Why would a player invest 31 points into a tree, but skip the 31 point talent?
There's only one answer to this -- because it's an undesirable talent. The player has already made the choice to give up a 31 point talent in another tree -- all they hav to do is swap 1 point (or 5 points, in the case of Affliction Warlocks) from somewhere else in that tree, into the 31 point talent.

Why would a player invest 31 points into a tree, but not go for the 41 point talent?
Well, this one's a more complex question. Perhaps the talent is bad. Or, perhaps there's a 21-pointer in a different tree that's more desirable. Another possible reason is the filler talents deep in the tree may be undesirable.

Final Conclusion: Lightwell and Circle of Healing are BY FAR the least desired 31/41 point talents across all classes and specs. Getting rid of them is the only option.

Interesting.

I could have told you that without any fancy data that priest 31 and 41 talent sucks and no one gets em, but i give you big props on doing this research, might bring some light into the minds of blizz priest devs.

Very interesting post. I'm playing on an alt right now, so I can't really study it. My only suggestion off the bat is to change the title so it's less belligerent. Give them one less reason to ignore/delete it. Of course, they'll probably ignore it anyway... =(

awesome! :D lol at the results....

<3

Another interesting note: The only 31-point talent that NO-ONE skipped? Shadowform.

Perhaps Blizzard considers it "balance" that priests have the best 31-point talent in one tree, and the worst in another.

I agree that any one of us could have guessed this information, but it is impressive to see it be so substantual. I hope blizzard also has this type of predictive capability so they can see which spells/talents need work.

For instance, wouldnt it be fun to see how often a spell like binding heal gets cast per day. My guess is that these type of numbers could be used to better tweak underutilized spells and talents alike.

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Q u o t e:


For instance, wouldnt it be fun to see how often a spell like binding heal gets cast per day. My guess is that these type of numbers could be used to better tweak underutilized spells and talents alike.

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I have never casted binding heal since i got it, its on my action bar just sitting there waiting to be used someday...but the day might never come, poor binding heal. :(

Lightwell is about a 5/10 imo, whereas we should get a 8/10 at 31.

CoH is about a 1/10 imo, whereas we should get a 10/10 at 41.

CoH's targeting is the issue, but they refuse to fix that because it would be too hard. They'd rather just tweak the mana and hp because those are easy. /sigh

No way that that many affliction locks skipped dark pact. It's just impossible.

Very well done.

PLAYERS!! PERCENTAGES!!

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Q u o t e:
No way that that many affliction locks skipped dark pact. It's just impossible.

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Hmm. You're right. I was considering Contagion as the 31-point affliction talent -- looks like that's a mistake. I'll redo the study later -- for now I'll just make a note in the original post.

Very interesting, thanks. :) Also, great title. :P

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Q u o t e:
Lightwell is about a 5/10 imo, whereas we should get a 8/10 at 31.

CoH is about a 1/10 imo, whereas we should get a 10/10 at 41.

CoH's targeting is the issue, but they refuse to fix that because it would be too hard. They'd rather just tweak the mana and hp because those are easy. /sigh

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I honestly felt the range of the heal was the problem with CoH... well that and the throughput. If they made CoH turn PoH into an instant cast with a 3 sec cooldown and +10% healing it might be kinda cool. Alternatively if they made it like a healing meteor (saw it suggested somewhere before) where it did X healing divided by the players in the area would be useful for different situations.

Lightwell needs to not break on damage, place a weakend soul debuff to prevent spamming, and scale with gear. Pretty simple and obvious fix.

These talents ARE bad. I've tried to find useful places for them and the situations do exist but not enough to warrant a talent point. Why spend a talent point on something that will help you in 1% of situations when you can take one that will help you in 100% of them.

Then again we are dealing with the people who designed shadow for raiding and put smite stats on the raid gear. And on the gear issue that should have been hotfixed a LONG time ago.

Blizz when priests loose faith you fail.

Later guys off to play my rogue.

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Q u o t e:
there's numbers in it

he MUST be right!

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You're not thinking like blizzard does:

"there's numbers in it

we MUST nerf something"