Increased Stats from Talents

Almost every talent tree for every class has a talent that, for (usually) 3 or 5 points, will do something like the following:

“Increases your X by Y%.”

For instance, on the very first tier of the Holy tree for paladins, there are two talents that do just that: one increases Strength by 10% at 5 points, the other Intellect.

There are still more talents (though these are more rare) that do something like the following:

“Increases your X by Y% of your Z.”

Further down in the Holy tree, there is a talent that “Increases your spell damage and healing by 35% of your intellect” at 5 points.

What am I getting at here?

If you put points in Divine Intellect (+10% int) and Holy Guidance (+35% of int to spell damage/healing), your intellect suddenly becomes very important. Without these talents, every one point of intellect on your gear:

- Increases your mana pool by 15
- Increases your spell crit chance by 0.016%

With those talents, 1 int becomes 1.1 int, and:

- Increases your mana pool by 16.5
- Increases your spell crit chance by 0.018%
- Increases your spell damage and healing by 0.385

You greatly increase the value of intellect by having those talents. What this means is that you end up needing to weigh that stat more heavily when looking at your gear.

For Retribution paladins, this focus shifts to strength, as with 5 points in Divine Strength, every point of strength on your gear increases your attack power by 2.2 instead of just 2.

For Protection paladins, stamina becomes your big selling point. With +16% to your stamina from two separate talents, every one stamina becomes 11.6 hit points instead of just 10.

This all may not sound like much, but remember that you’re dealing with hundreds of these points in these stats as you gear up. If you’ve got 400 intellect on your gear, put points in Divine Intellect and you suddenly have 440 on your character sheet. 500 strength becomes 550, 1100 attack power instead of just 1000. It all adds up.

Remember, Blizzard is one for little increases. As you upgrade your gear you notice this…you’ll get 3 int here, 4 healing there, lose one mana per 5 in favor of picking up 1% spell crit…so these increases in your talent trees mean quite a substantial bit in the end, as they’re increases by upwards of 10%…where a gear upgrade (even from say a blue to a purple) will often net you less than 1% in efficiency (in whatever it is you do).

A BIG LIST*
Hunters
+% of Intellect to Attack Power (Marksmanship)
Chance on hit to add % of Agility to Attack Power of all attackers of target(Survival)
Druids
% of Intellect to Mana per 5 (Balance)
+% of Strength to Healing (Feral)
+% Spirit (Restoration)
Mages
+% Mana (Arcane) (increases value of intellect)
+% Fire/Frost damage (Fire/Frost)
+% Crit damage to frost spells (Frost) (increases value of spell critical rating, effectively converting spell crit into extra spell damage)
Paladins
+% Intellect/Strength (Holy)
+% Stamina (Protection)
+% All stats (Protection) (Blessing of Kings)
Priests
+% Stam/Int/Spirit (Discipline)
+% of Spirit to Healing (Holy)
+% Shadow Damage (Shadow) – and with a % of your damage done being returned to your party via Vampiric Embrace and Touch, this value is further increased
Rogues
+% Crit damage to abilities (Assassination)
+% Attack Power (Subtlety)
Shaman
% of Intellect to Mana per 5 (Elemental)
+% Attack Power and attack speed after a critical hit (Enhancement) (increases value of both crit chance and attack power)
+% of Intellect to Spell Damage and Healing (Restoration)
Warlock
+% Shadow Damage (Affliction)
+% of pet’s health/mana to Spell Damage (Demonology) (increases value of stats that scale pet stats)
+% Crit damage (Destruction)
Warrior
+% Crit damage (Arms)
+% Attack Power (Fury)
+% Strength/Stamina (Protection)

*This is by no means meant to be exhaustive…just stuff from the top of my head.