Vanilla Talent System

[Froggy]

I prefer the Vanilla talent system. Yeah, not every talent is exciting. Sure there are some boring +1% damage talents. But overall, it allowed for more customization. My Vanilla Hunter spec is one that I really enjoy, and it works well for me. It's a spec I've never seen in any Hunter guide. It was pretty unique. It fit my playstyle. Unique specs are not possible with the current talent system.

[Deleted]

It doesn't give you any degree of choice, you still take the talents that are best for the given situation... the only difference is now we have to switch our talents to maximize AoE/ST on a fight to fight basis, instead of in the old talent system where that tedious BS wasn't necessary... The choice doesn't exist, it is still cookie cutter.

I have to agree with this. So far the new talents offer less choices for mages at least then our old ones.

[Pantalaimon]

The system now isn't much better, I think I have just as much a cookie cutter build now as I did back in Wrath. I have 3 passives, 2 talents I rarely use and 2 Dps focused.

One difference between the two, despite potential for cookie cutter builds, is that the new system is less punishing for new players. The degree to which a new player under the old talent system could make in order to essentially degrade their class/spec optimal playstyle in the end game was phenomenal. I'm not of the opinion that "less is more", but it still stands that they more options for new players about what is optimal for a class/spec & what is not optimal chances are that unless they go to a website or pick up on the game really fast they will make more mistakes more often if their goal is to play optimally & not just wacky crazy fun specs. The framework for character progression/customization shouldn't encourage new players to fall in to 'traps' when figuring out said character's talent progression.

The new talent system makes this possibility less frequent & easier for new players to understand. Only 3 choices per row & not all of them will drastically affect your pve or pvp rotation/priority.

[Deleted]

I didn't mind the old talent trees that much. I hate it when they forced you to pick only 1 tree in Cataclysm though.
What I always disliked about the vanilla tree (playing as a priest) was the fact that you had to spend 5 points in wands to get 25% more damage while mages had the exact same thing for only 2 points. What the tits ?!

Priests relied a whole lot more on wands.

People saying there was only one right spec for the vanilla talent builds are full of shit. The only problem back then was the cost which should have reset each week.

[Imnick]

I loved spending 3 points to increase my wand dps

[Thornquist]

The old talent tree was better for a good progression experience.

The new talent "tree" is better for endgame.

[Lilija]

The old talent tree was better for a good progression experience.

The new talent "tree" is better for endgame.

I think this sums it up pretty well. And imo, given endgame is the majority of gameplay for most people, it is more important. However, the leveling experience should have some system added that would give similar feel to old talent trees. Making this kind of leveling tree with flat stat or skill upgrades having some space for choise but utimately, being always completly full at max level. Something like the perks in WoD but with choise.

[joesmoed]

Just wanting to hear opinions, I personally think the current Talent System is over simplified and gives us much less diverse characters, but I know a lot of people complained about the Vanilla system being too complex, even though it gave us a TON of different combos and diversity.

I'm trying to make a basic MMO, and am planning on a talent system similar to Vanilla's where you get points each level up to spend wherever you want on the different trees (with tiers that unlock)

What do you guys prefer now? Current, vanillas, or a different rendition?

you can SUM your entire topic into

System is over simplified

They have "over simplified" every aspect of the game that made the game great to begin with and now its no longer fun because of it.

[Kokolums]

If you have a TRUE MMO where leveling has a legit endgame, PvP has a legit endgame, and raiding has a legit endgame, than a large talent tree with aspects to help your character in various endgames makes sense. If you have what WoW offers, which is a weak PvP endgame, leveling forgotten as an endgame, and really just raid or die, a talent tree makes less sense.

[Exsoul]

I liked far better the old talent system. Every level granted a point so leveling was more fun. You knew that for each point spent you were closer to that new skill granted only by that talent in that specialization. Everybody says the same about you ended using the same build, but with the current system is the same.

Also that 1% of any stat by point was more useful before than today and helped a lot to get to the cap leaving you more choices in you gear.

[Kanariya]

Basically this is all being argued from a PvE perspective where there was always one option and the others were subpar. Outside of that, there was plenty of customization for the old trees (especially as more talents were added with BC/WotLK) if you weren't raiding. The lack of respec on demand and high cost for it (50g) were two big issues with it. Blizzard could have easily fixed the cookie cutter build problem by making it impossible to spec into two competitive talents, but they built them specifically to be cookie cutter for raiding.

The new system is more customizable in the sense that you can change out any talent on demand and aren't required to spend points in one talent to unlock another, but it's an extremely boring system that still has cookie cutter builds. The difference is the cookie cutter builds are based on encounter because the trees can be changed on whim. Having half my talents be completely useless in raiding is pretty awful though, and so is only getting one talent every 15 levels.

[Zoldam]

I like the newer concept more, but it is much lamer. The thing I liked about the old one was getting a point each level, it was very satisfying. And your spec being based off what you pick, not a pre-made thing. The "choice" now is really not any better then it was, and that's why I prefer the old one, the feeling of slowly getting stronger. I think ideally a mix would be cool... like maybe a "big" choice every 15 levels while every 2-3 in between is a smaller passive choice like +5% crit to X spell.