"Ghost talents" hotfixed
by Eliah Hecht 
Jan 8th 2009 at 8:00PM
Now this is a fun bug. Between patch 2.4.3 and patch 3.0.3 (which was the big pre-Wrath patch), the talent trees for all classes changed a lot. Among other things, this involved removing some talents. And apparently, when these talents were removed from the game, some players there were specced into them got to keep them, even though all their other talents were reset. The affected talents were as follows:
- Warlock: Improved Lash of Pain
- Warlock: Fel Stamina
- Shaman: Totemic Mastery
- Shaman: Improved Lightning Shield (Rank 3)
- Paladin: Precision
- Rogue: Fist Weapon Specialization
- Priest: Shadow Focus (Ranks 4 and 5)
So if you think you've been critting more than you should with fist weapons, or your succubus has been Lash of Paining more than seems right, that's probably why. This bug has now been hot-fixed out, and players will no longer gain benefits from these talents.
[Thanks, Kvothe]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Alkaios Jan 8th 2009 8:13PM
Um, cool?
Never knew there were "ghost talents" were in the game...but gratz to Blizzard for catching them.
elstor Jan 8th 2009 8:13PM
first... poor hunters didn't get any bugged ones :(
elstor Jan 8th 2009 8:13PM
nooo.... I was second
peagle Jan 8th 2009 8:29PM
Don't worry, you'll always be first idiot to post.
hiitgy Jan 9th 2009 12:01AM
I think you mean "healing totals" are not worth anything. Healing meters in general (and in context) can be very useful.
Effective healing is a decent broad measure of people paying attention and putting forth effort for instance on trash, and also which classes excel at which events.
Healing breakdowns (what spells used, what people healed, etc) are useful for figuring out what your peers or counterpart healing classes are healing. This is useful for catching for instance someone rolling full HoTs on the warlocks exclusively versus full hots on all tanks even during low damage/high spike periods.
Personally I will peek at effective healing once in awhile to make sure I am keeping up, and if I am being buried I'll look at that player's breakdown to determine what he's doing right (or wrong). Once I understand the difference I decide whether it makes sense to make any changes. During the raid though I usually keep recount perma-set to one thing - damage taken - so that I know who to bump up or down my target priority list.
A perfect example is when another resto druid in my guild beat me on a few fights, which baffled me. I looked into his effective and found rejuv doing 5 times as much healing as me. This led to more research, and ultimately I started using rejuv much more on those fights. The fights were Sapphiron and Loatheb, and as it turns out a rejuv heavy healing strat is actually very good. So meters helped me become a better healer.
Another example is a new holy priest who joined our guild recently. Our raid was going great, but in the post-analysis I discovered this priest's effective healing was abysmal. As a result him and a few of our veteran priests got chatting on vent, and long story short he learned several entirely new methods of healing as a priest, raising his healing effectiveness through the roof and making him a better healer.
hiitgy Jan 9th 2009 12:03AM
sorry wrong thread >
Max Jan 9th 2009 1:23AM
I don't understand... how does this happen?
do you not remember what thread you're reading...?
I see it alot
Tushar Bharadia Jan 9th 2009 7:55AM
WTB "Thread" Meter.
wizeguy Jan 8th 2009 9:34PM
Woah, Paladins used to have a 20% hit chance talent? Fury Warriors have like 3%, and Paladins don't even duel-wield. I guess that was why they removed the talent, but Woah!
aellas Jan 8th 2009 9:43PM
It was 3% actually.
Amaxe Jan 8th 2009 10:12PM
I thought everyone had their points refunded at 3.0.2
my2cents Jan 9th 2009 12:19PM
They did but certain ones didn't actually reset, they only appeared to (was not intentional on Blizzard's part obviously.)
Shadowpriests have been noticing strange behavior with hits and misses since 3.0.2 and someone finally figured out that if you had 4 or 5 ranks of Shadow Focus right before 3.0.2 went live, you still had the extra hit chance offered by that talent (even though those ranks and the values offered by them no longer exist.)
A few days ago, this was reported to Blizzard on the forums and suddenly this hotfix came out. I'm guessing that when Blizzard went to investigate the bug with Shadow Focus they stumbled upon several other similar bugs.
** Wowinsider, feel free to offer me a job any time ;) **
Peridan Jan 8th 2009 10:55PM
Warlocks are doing so crappy in Wrath PVP and they had a bug that buffed some of them. Egads, c'mon Blizz fix them already.
Max Jan 9th 2009 1:22AM
now you know how mages and hunters have felt for the past 2 years.
loutr Jan 9th 2009 2:52AM
I don't know if this is related to this issue, but a funny thing has been happening to me recently : on my disc priest, when there is a holy priest in the raid, Surge of light will proc now and then, even though I don't have the talent.
jva Jan 9th 2009 5:19AM
I guess its an unrelated bug with PoM. His PoM jumps off you and procs SoL and you are a priest so you get it. It will be fixed in 3.0.8 (see patch notest).
Lirian Jan 9th 2009 4:24AM
Noes!
such a shame they fixxed this, i was kinda enjoying the 5% extra crit with fistweapons, that and with the new talent gave me 10% extra crit with fistweapons. noticed yesterday that my crit fell 5% now atleast i know why >.
Improvidence Jan 9th 2009 6:16AM
Aha. My prot paladin had been going through every heroic without missing once with his melee swings, which seemed strange with only 4% hit. Saw a couple misses show up on the meters today, though. So that explains that. Oh well, not a big loss.
Elmo Jan 9th 2009 8:45AM
Yay more totems to drop on my Shaman...
when will they finally implement a skill to move totems to your new position..? /sigh
MisterTwo Jan 9th 2009 9:49AM
Does this mean I'll have to start wearing +hit on my shadowpriest?
=(
Was fun while it lasted.