Even though our current tall and strong talent trees have been pruned down to the size of a small bonsai, the devs have clearly stated that the players won’t be forced to deal with useless talents anymore.
Indeed, this has been a problem with most classes. In all specs, there are either talents that are deemed absolutely necessary(and that everybody takes), or talents that need to be taken to reach the following tier. Either way, the end result is that, rather than providing more than one viable alternative, all classes have a clearly defined spec, with any deviation from the norm being quantified as a dps loss.
Judging by the current state of the trees, I’m expecting to have a few viable options in a spec. While looking at the balance tree, one can see several options, depending on what your poison is. Of course, some talents have left me quite bewildered. In their current incarnations, there is still a clear distinction made between pve and pvp talents, in all trees. However, there seem to be clear options allowing builds focused on pve, pvp, or a mix of the two.
With 41 available talent points in total, I find it quite likely that the builds will require 31 points in your main tree, with the other 10 spread in a second. The lower tier talents seem quite specifically designed to be attractive for all specs, since they generally buff the main abilities of feral, resto and balance druids. As such, I’d expect a multitude of possible specs(balance with points in feral or balance with points in resto, anyone?), all remaining to be decided based on glyphs and talent synergy.
All that remains to be seen is how Eclipse(and to a lesser extent, Tree of Life) will be changed. The mechanics should be core parts of their respective specs, and seeing the final implementations will be the only way to tell whether Cataclysm is something druids should be excited about.
