Vanilla Talent System

[Deleted]

Today's talent system also has cookie cutter builds. But it's even less choice.

The vanilla talent tree system works just fine, but they should've made the weaker talents a bit stronger to create more meaningful choice.

+2% damage increase isn't fun as a talent. But the same kind of shit is in the Legion Artifact traits so who are we kidding?

[meroes]

Today's talents are cool in theory because there are more options for each tier. In practice they really are just cookie cutter. Vanilla talents were 100% cookie cutter, but they at least gave you a sense of progression as you level, which is lacking now.

[Aleksej89]

Vanilla style of talents had zero choice.
Each spec had one optimal build and that was it.
You would set your talents and you would not touch them for months until new major balance patch changes things.

Some people liked making gimmick specs that resulted in them being useless cripples compared to optimal specs.
I am very glad people do not have that choice anymore... really hated getting a tank/healer with full DPS talents and gear.

[Deleted]

Oh, yes? I am 100% sure that I didn't feel shit, any difference at all after clicking that icon with talent. And I have done it yesterday.

Take your rose-tinted glasses off and don't try to enchant the reality. Vanilla's talents were far from being interesting or fun.

Have you ever played vanilla? In vanilla was pushing your character to the limits a big deal, 2% was a huge difference back then.

[Lilija]

Have you ever played vanilla? In vanilla was pushing your character to the limits a big deal, 2% was a huge difference back then.

No it was not because there even weren't any tools to measure that if you are doing that. The whole difficulty of Vanilla was:
- there were 40 people to manage in raid
- most of those 40 people were clueless (yet bosses still died, cause vast majority of them were extremly easy when it comes to mechanics)
- people didn't know the game well
- getting gear was a huge time sink
- most of specs were broken
- nothing was balanced

[Deleted]

No it was not because there even weren't any tools to measure that if you are doing that.

Thats not true, there where many tools in vanilla to measure that. Maybe you just didn't know about them?

[Sylreick]

The old system felt like progression for the character as you leveled, the new one has no sense of progression just another ability to add to the bar (like learning a new skill from leveling up, no discernible difference).

New system is decent on giving us a "choice", but it also brings the expectation that you will switch talents every fight to bring the "best one". It's really no better than the old system, except that they're changed a lot more often (and is easier to do so).

[Deleted]

Let's just go full PoE.

[makketota]

Mote bad options is what it gave us. In the end you had less xhoice since the correct talents were obvious.

Sure it was bad choices, but it felt good making them. Isnt there a middle ground ? What if there were artifact style talents when you were leveling up ? And every 15th levels you will unlock a talent tier, maybe you could choose which one to unlock first etc.

[Leih]

On the contrary, what Tziva is describing is the present system, where there is an absolutely optimal way to spec for max DPS and nobody can use the other "sub-optimal" talents b/c they will be gimiping themselves and potentially losing their raid spot.

Because the thing is, at the end of the day, this is how it is for all talent systems in a theme park game like WoW. It doesn't matter how it looks or what structure it takes, at the end of the day for high end play where maxing your DPS matters you are going to have one of two situations. In a given choice of points, either:

A) There is a mathematically optimal build which will do the most damage based on the encounter and what you're doing in it

B) The talents are so weak, useless or irrelevant that it doesn't matter which you pick.

This applies to both the old and new talent system. If you pick an encounter, there will be one set of talents which works better for that encounter and the job you are doing there than the others. If you want a system with true choice and consequences, and real variation, you need to look at a sandbox game because that doesn't fly in the kind of raiding/pvping world that WoW is focused on.

That in mind, both systems have their advantages for WoW. The new system makes it much easier to actually change from talent to talent based on the encounter, without having to redo the whole tree to make your little tweaks or swap for a different ability, it also is more user friendly and a bit more honest about all of the possibilities.

The old system was unquestionably better for levelling (more satisfying to get more frequent "points"), allowed a greater illusion of free choice and let people feel smarter when they came up with something a little different because it was more obtuse in design.

In practical terms, the actual choice when you talk about maximising your performance was not really that different. This new system just takes away the fluff and makes it more obvious what you are doing.

The true solution to all of these arguments is not to bring back the old system or keep the new one, but to combine the advantages into something that works for everyone. I think the artifact weapon trees are a good step in the right direction for this, giving that satisfaction of "levelling up" but having the same end goal for everyone so there's not big imbalances at the top end. I'd like to see some kind of system for levelling where you get to choose how your character grows, but there's only so many points so everyone can end up even once you finally get to max level.

I'd also like to see more variation in playstyles and rotations based on which talents you pick in the new system, which is also something Legion is attempting more and more, so that's a plus.

[Lilija]

Thats not true, there where many tools in vanilla to measure that. Maybe you just didn't know about them?

Afaik simcraft and logs did not exist in Vanilla. A simple dmg meter does not have a capacity to reliably measure such small %.

Not to mention, that given the design of bosses in Vanilla, anything before Naxx did not require such information. All we could do really is do the math on which talents are the best theoretical choise and appart from that cookie cutter build there was no need to ever change anything in your talents ever. Those things could have as well been baseline and it wouldn't make any difference.

[Grimreaper]

Vanilla style of talents had zero choice.
Each spec had one optimal build and that was it.
You would set your talents and you would not touch them for months until new major balance patch changes things.

Some people liked making gimmick specs that resulted in them being useless cripples compared to optimal specs.
I am very glad people do not have that choice anymore... really hated getting a tank/healer with full DPS talents and gear.

Once again, this is bullshit. Even so, how has this changed at all with the current talent trees?

If you did play in vanilla, wich i doubt, can you tell me what the optimal dps spec was for warriors for top-end raiding?

- - - Updated - - -

No it was not because there even weren't any tools to measure that if you are doing that. The whole difficulty of Vanilla was:
- there were 40 people to manage in raid
- most of those 40 people were clueless (yet bosses still died, cause vast majority of them were extremly easy when it comes to mechanics)
- people didn't know the game well
- getting gear was a huge time sink
- most of specs were broken
- nothing was balanced

You are talking about early raids like UBRS and MC, not late AQ40 and Naxx in particular where shit actually mattered.

- - - Updated - - -

Afaik simcraft and logs did not exist in Vanilla. A simple dmg meter does not have a capacity to reliably measure such small %.

Not to mention, that given the design of bosses in Vanilla, anything before Naxx did not require such information. All we could do really is do the math on which talents are the best theoretical choise and appart from that cookie cutter build there was no need to ever change anything in your talents ever. Those things could have as well been baseline and it wouldn't make any difference.

There were spreadsheets for some classes, some that worked pretty well. Also, the hardcore nerds did the math themselves, as the rotations and damage output of classes/specs were a lot more simple to calculate back then.

[Leih]

Once again, this is bullshit. Even so, how has this changed at all with the current talent trees?

If you did play in vanilla, wich i doubt, can you tell me what the optimal dps spec was for warriors for top-end raiding?

Of all the classes, why did you ask for warrior? 17/34 build was was pretty set in stone :P I guess you could drop one point for piercing howl if the encounter demanded it but there wasn't a lot of choice in fury warrior, at least if we're talking about late vanilla after the class revamps.

[Grimreaper]

Because the thing is, at the end of the day, this is how it is for all talent systems in a theme park game like WoW. It doesn't matter how it looks or what structure it takes, at the end of the day for high end play where maxing your DPS matters you are going to have one of two situations. In a given choice of points, either:

A) There is a mathematically optimal build which will do the most damage based on the encounter and what you're doing in it

B) The talents are so weak, useless or irrelevant that it doesn't matter which you pick.

This applies to both the old and new talent system. If you pick an encounter, there will be one set of talents which works better for that encounter and the job you are doing there than the others.

Yep, this is all true. However in vanilla the cookie cutter specs were not always the optimal specs, in several cases a weirdo cross-tree spec would be the optimal one for a given encounter. And that is what we lost with the new talent system, the choice to fully optimize our character for each encounter.

I changed my talents multiple times every single week during Vanilla and TBC, anyone who didnt do this wasnt a real raider.

[Leih]

Yep, this is all true. However in vanilla the cookie cutter specs were not always the optimal specs, in several cases a weirdo cross-tree spec would be the optimal one for a given encounter. And that is what we lost with the new talent system, the choice to fully optimize our character for each encounter.

I changed my talents multiple times every single week during Vanilla and TBC, anyone who didnt do this wasnt a real raider.

There may have been one or two specs that had some variations at a given point in time where changing the whole spec was a thing... but really, look at the trees and tell me you didn't just move around a couple of points each time you changed (but still had to fill in all the points to get there).

Aside from some very specific exceptions (which honestly were usually down to tuning oversights, such as with warlocks in wotlk) there really wasn't as much variation as you make out here.

Besides that, several classes require you to change a lot of your talents around based on encounter in the new system too. It's not much different. If you want to be optimal, that is.

[Barnabas]

People like the one now more because everyone is basically the same. No more weird builds to wonder about or question the legitimacy of. So thats one less excuse for the people that stare at meters all game to complain about.

[Grimreaper]

Of all the classes, why did you ask for warrior? 17/34 build was was pretty set in stone :P I guess you could drop one point for piercing howl if the encounter demanded it but there wasn't a lot of choice in fury warrior, at least if we're talking about late vanilla after the class revamps.

Right into the trap. 17/34 was a terrible choice for top-end raiding, yet this is what the vast majority of warriors picked. It was bad because it took up precious debuff slots on the bosses with deep wounds (imagine having 5 fury warriors in the raid, poor poor warlocks :<), it didnt provide the highest possible dps and it left you completly useless as an off-tank. No, the best dps spec for a raiding warrior would be a 5/32/14 2handed Slam spec. You didnt need to get Impale as you were always going to be threat capped anyways and that extra crit dmg was just going to waste, this meant you wouldnt spec into Deep Wounds wich did pretty much zero dmg whilst taking up a debuff slot. With a lot of leftover points you can pick the important talents for tanking, or get some utility in improved demo shout or piercing howl.

[Donald Hellscream]

I didn't mind it back then but in hindsight all those passive talents that just ever so slightly increased something healing or damage was fucking boring.. Now a Vanilla style system with actual meaningful choices instead of put 5 points into this to increase damage of *insert ability name here* by 5% would be cool, but the new talent system in WoW compared to the one in Vanilla WoW? I prefer the new one.

[Leih]

Right into the trap. 17/34 was a terrible choice for top-end raiding, yet this is what the vast majority of warriors picked. It was bad because it took up precious debuff slots on the bosses, it didnt provide the highest possible dps and it left you completly useless as an off-tank. No, the best dps spec for a raiding warrior would be a 5/32/14 2handed Slam spec. You didnt need to get Impale as you were always going to be threat capped anyways and that extra crit dmg was just going to waste, this meant you wouldnt spec into Deep Wounds wich did pretty much zero dmg whilst taking up a debuff slot. With a lot of leftover points you can pick the important talents for tanking, or get some utility in improved demo shout or piercing howl.

You must have been playing with some bad tanks. Aside from very specific threat-capped fights like Lashlayer or Onyxia, dual-wield always came out ahead for me. 2handed fury was a novelty build for special snowflakes, or PVP arms warriors who didn't want to spend DKP on one-handers.

[Grimreaper]

You must have been playing with some bad tanks. Aside from very specific threat-capped fights like Lashlayer or Onyxia, dual-wield always came out ahead for me. 2handed fury was a novelty build for special snowflakes, or PVP arms warriors who didn't want to spend DKP on one-handers.

Oh i can tell you we had decent tanks, we also had a lot of 17/34 fury warriors. Nobody came close to me on dps, or on threat. I'm guessing you dont even know how to use Slam optimally.

Btw, here is to my knowledge the highest recorded dps done on Patchwerk by a fury warrior. He is wearing full BiS gear, weapons from Kel'thuzad and pretty much all possible world-buffs and whatnot. What if i told you i pulled 1300+ dps on him with BWL/AQ40 gear wearing an Untamed Blade.