Talent System Preview: Runemage and Musketeer

We're back today with the second part of our series previewing the new Talents system coming to the game on March 19th. Today we're unveiling the choices that will be available to the Runemage and Musketeer.

If you missed it, be sure to check out the first post in this series for general information on how the Talents system will work, as well as the preview of the Ranger and Warrior talents.

Runemage

The Runemage's two paths are Elementalist, which focuses on single-target damage, and Tormentor, which focuses on multi-target damage.

Elementalist	Tormentor
Improved Fireworks: Your next Fireworks spell takes on the color of the Frost, Fire, or Pushback spell cast before it.	Improved Light: Your next Light spell takes on the color of the Frost, Fire, or Pushback spell cast before it.
Selfish Streak: You gain an 8% damage boost to your spells for a short time after casting 3 successful spells in a row.	Shared Streak: Yourself and your nearby allies gain a 4% damage boost for a short time after casting 3 successful spells in a row.
Lend a Hand: Your spells now follow the direction of your off-hand rather than your wand tip.	Static Charge: Your successful spell casts cause a static charge to build up on your off-hand, which you can use the Trigger button to unleash in a short blast.
Elemental Affinity: Your Fire, Frost, and Shadow spells grant additional buffs and debuffs to yourself and your targets.	True Affliction: Your Fire and Frost spells gain an additional damage over time effect. Your Arcane Missile spell now spreads your DoT effects to all targets it hits.

The Runemage's Tier 4 talents add additional depth and complexity to the class for high-level play. When Elemental Affinity is active, when you cast a Fireball spell you will gain a buff to increase the power of your next attack. When you cast a Frost spell, your next spell's effect will be lengthened in duration (for Slow and Shadow DoT effects). Your Affliction spells will cause the enemy target to receive a debuff to their magical protection. So you'll want to rotate through these spell affinities to get the maximum synergy going as you play.

With True Affliction, your Fireball and Frost spells gain an additional DoT effect (with varying durations and damage levels). Your Arcane Missile spell, when it explodes, will spread out DoT effects among all the targets that it hits. For example, if there is a group of 3 enemies, one of which has an Affliction DoT on it, hitting all 3 with the Arcane Missile will cause the Affliction to spread to the other 2 targets, with the same remaining duration as the first target. Note that this only works for your Fireball, Frostbolt, and Affliction DoTs, not other DoTs such as Poison.

Musketeer

The Musketeer's two paths are Lightbringer and Turret Master. The Musketeer can choose to double-down on their healing ability, with additional tools in their toolbox for aiding their allies, or they can choose to focus on increasing their Turret's capabilities, leading to additional mobility and options for increasing damage.

Lightbringer	Turret Master
Improved Renew: Your Renew orb's effect lasts for an additional 2 seconds.	Improved Poison: Your Poison orb's effect lasts for an additional 2 seconds.
Improved Lifewell: The radius and duration of your Lifewell is increased by 20%.	Speedy: When your turret expires, all allies within 20 meters gains a 100% speed boost for 4 seconds.
Renewed Synergy: When you heal an ally with Cure Greater Wounds, if they already have a Renew effect from you, that effect is refreshed.	Total Recall: While your Turret is deployed, you can press the Trigger button in your off-hand to recall it and re-deploy it. Note that the current maximum life of the turret is not increased.
Light's Blessing: Whenever you heal an ally with Cure Greater Wounds, your nearby allies with Renew active gain 25% of the healing done.	Empowered Turret: Your Turret can gain additional capabilities when you shoot it with orbs.

The Light's Blessing talent should be pretty self-explanatory, as it allows you to have great synergy going between your Renew and Cure Greater Wounds orbs. Now you'll have more of a strategic reason to use Renew on some targets and not others, to ensure they're always gaining additional health.

The Empowered Turret talent changes the interaction between your Turret and your orbs. Now when you shoot your Turret with an orb, rather than exploding the Turret and increasing the range of the orb, the Turret will absorb the orb, gaining additional effects.

Cure Greater Wounds: Increases the base healing of your Turret.
Renew: Adds a Renew effect every time your Turret heals a target.
Poison: Adds a Poison effect every time your Turret damages a target.
Frost: Adds a Slow effect every time your Turret damages a target.

Note that in addition to this, if your Turret is in "healing mode" and you shoot it with a damage-based orb, it will also gain the ability to damage targets, and switch between healing and damaging randomly. The same goes for shooting a healing-based orb at a damage-mode turret.

In addition to these new talents, the base Musketeer class will be gaining their own Resurrection ability. Shooting the Turret with a Lifewell orb will, rather than exploding the turret or absorbing the orb, cause your Turret to grant Resurrection to one nearby target. This can also be triggered while the Musketeer is in combat. However, there will be a long cooldown associated with using this ability, so you can generally use it once or twice per dungeon run, but certainly not every fight.

Ranger Talent Update

In addition to these new talents, we've been re-working some of the previously-announced talents, and made some changes to the Ranger talents we wanted to make you aware of. Here is the current revised Ranger talent tree:

Snipe Shot	Quick Shot
Precision: Unlocks the Precision Shot Indicator, which allows you to do increased damage with precise timing and careful aim.	Rapidity: Unlocks the Rapid Shot Inidicator, which gives additional bonus damage as long as you are firing shots very quickly without pause.
Improved Charge: Your Charged Shot applies a 2-second, 35% Slow effect to the target.	Rapid Charge: Your Charged Shot charges in 1 second instead of 2 seconds.
Arrow Sight: The trails of your arrows last much longer than usual, and shots from long distances gain a 20% base damage boost.	Multishot: Every time you fire an arrow, you have a chance to fire an additional empowered arrow.
Globe Master: Gain an additional 6th Shot Globe, and you can generate up to 3 globes at once when firing from long distances.	Overcharge: When you do a Charged Shot, gain an additional damage boost for each Shot Globe currently filled, using up the globes in the process.

First off, we moved the Precision and Rapidity talents to the very first tier. Our thinking behind this is that unlike the max-level talents of the other classes which unlock additional depth and complexity, these talents fundamentally alter how the Ranger plays. So we don't want you playing through 20 levels a certain way, and then having to totally change how you play at Level 20. We also modified Arrow Sight a little to better work with existing mechanics in the game and add a damage bonus. Finally, we added new max-level talents which better synergize with the other available options to unlock interesting damage-boosting capability in two different ways.

As before, please note that all talent trees are still being refined and balanced, and are subject to change. We'll continue to work on these even after they release on March 19th to get the balance right.