Upcoming talent change gutting

[Spiral Mage]

They make a smart move for the first time in awhile and people are upset? Confusing.

[Delimit]

As someone play beta, it does "feel" different than live even though it's only slightly easier, but just removing all of the confirmation dialogue and tomes makes it feel even worse.

But I would argue the way it is on live is not good either, so not sure what point you're trying to make is?

I was not looking forward to having to constantly switch talents when moving from pack to pack. The way it is right now, it's optimal to switch talents for speed when moving between packs and quickly click onto a different talent right before you pull the group.

It feels like less of an arbitrary hassle. Changing talents on live isn't hard, it's not expensive, it's just annoyance because of the confirmation box. It changed nothing functionally, while removing the useless annoyances when you're trying to change 4 different talents between trash packs and bosses just to be functional at both.

Who said you had to change constantly? Nothing changed in that respect, because it isn't hard to change them currently. If you weren't doing it now then the talent choice wasn't worthwhile, or you were lazy. Either way you probably wouldn't have done it in Legion either.

You shouldn't be penalized for trying to optimize your play, otherwise people will just pick generic shit and never change it.

[Nachtigal]

The difference is that a spec is the identity of a player. You, as you're writing walls of text regarding how cool it was in vanilla, should actually understand that. You know, when back in the good old days, we used to identify players by their specs, like that: "Jonh is a good holy priest", or "Mary sucks at retri". When dualspec was introduced, we lost that identification, because players were no longer playing specs, they were playing whole class instead. That's why I believe changing specs should be limited, and also to not allow people to easily have +/-1 healer/tank in the course of fight, etc.

Changing talents in your one spec is a completely another story, though. This shorter talent tree was given to us to allow fast rapid tuning of our specs in the field between fights. Ask your raiding tank how many times he switches talents before pulls, you'll be surprised. If you want to tell me that now I am unable to switch talents in the field without going to hell and coming back, then I'd love to see old talent trees back, because quick field tuning was the main reason for change.

Your talents were directly related to your class back in Vanilla. And you could pick up a few of the other specs talents while still being in Fury. Spec identity was one spell. Bladestorm for arms warriors, and I can't remember the other 2 for the other specs

There is no spec identity without talent identity(for classes with multiple dps specs, anyway) . the difference between specs now is a few minor spells in your spellbook, and whatever slight variations your talents may offer. Other than that it's all small visuals.

[Kuroii]

People bitched so blizzard made it harder because honestly they understood that the gold cost wasn't bad at all now they are just making it like this so people can keep there precious 30 gold

[Seefer]

Or just let it exist and don't fuck with it. I don't understand why it has to be "the RPG way" here, but in literally every other format the RPG way just gets in the way.

Frankly, artificial gold sinks like this are stupid as they don't affect anyone but those without gold.

Gets in the way? LOL oh heaven forbid there is any form of RPG in an MMORPG.............oh the HORROR!

[Orwell7]

The problem with this is that it is easy enough to become a chore, but not hard enough to make a real difference.

[l33t]

They make a smart move for the first time in awhile and people are upset? Confusing.

Its not that smart, considering people disliked gold penalty for changing specs, and now they are forced to pay gold for changing talents.

Its like, you ask a robber to not take your money, and he rapes you instead, while taking your money.

[Summer]

Ideally, your raid leader would bring you for ST damage because you're arcane, and your friend for AoE because he's frost (or whatever other class/spec that has good AoE) Creating diverse raid groups. Example: Raid A has arcane (ST) mage / Fury (AoE) warrior. Raid B has Frost (AoE) / Arms (ST) warrior.

It's ideal for guilds to have 40 man rosters and make people sit half the fights so we don't need ot be able to change specs? How the hell is this fun for anyone?

Really?

[HardlyWaken]

I don't understand why people are so upset by this... I leaped for joy when i read this. Now I can freely change between 3 specs. That's great. And no longer will we be forced into some weird elitism of needing to change our build every other major pull. The different between WoD and Legion is that in WoD there was usually a clear best. In Legion they're more situational or ST vs AOE. We would be spending an abnormal amount of time just changing specs (most would probably just make talent changing macros), which would completely delude the point of having talents in the first place. Outside of saving raiders and dungeon runners from having to change every 2 minutes, there are Inns (usually multiple) in every zone... This is not even close to inconvenient outside of curbing unnecessary respeccing behavior, which, let me remind you, would likely need to be balanced around, especially in the new Challenge modes. You'd have people fast-swapping constantly to get ahead and people who didn't want to macro talent changes would be left behind all because people "wanted their freedoms".

Believe it or not, this was a pretty good idea. Your freedoms would get really old, really fast, with how things are shaping up in Legion, and frankly, I like having my talents mean more in terms of having a build suited for as many situations as possible rather than having 3-4 macroed layouts that meant nothing.

[l33t]

Believe it or not, this was a pretty good idea. Your freedoms would get really old, really fast, with how things are shaping up in Legion, and frankly, I like having my talents mean more in terms of having a build suited for as many situations as possible rather than having 3-4 macroed layouts that meant nothing.

And, I guess, if you're unlucky to play a single dps spec of a class, instead of tuning yourself by fight per fight basis, you can go and fuck yourself. Right?

[Cooper]

It's ideal for guilds to have 40 man rosters and make people sit half the fights so we don't need ot be able to change specs? How the hell is this fun for anyone?

Really?

It's fun for people who want to play a character and not a spreadsheet with interchangeable parts.

[Keltas]

They should make it even more restrictive. Although this is good enough to fix dungeons (especially mythic dungeons) where all you do right now is swap as you run between packs. It's absolutely stupid. As they said, you literally have every talent in a dungeon right now and it ruins the point of talent choices.


I have no idea how you'd make it more restrictive that wouldn't make all the people here have an aneurysm, but I'm sure just as many would like it to be more meaningful as a choice. If they had better balancing, then you could get away with locking them in in some form. But with how they randomly gut talents, that'd be too painful.


They could add a talent token from doing world quests. Each quest rewards one. You can respec a talent by using one. Maybe daily limit them.
That way the poor aren't affected harder than the rich.
If you're below level 110 you wouldn't need a token, but instead you'd need the old tomes and dust.


Keep the towns only restriction too. It'll keep dungeons from being a talent swapping to win fest.
Make the scribe thing not work in dungeons, I'd say just remove it but people will respec for progression anyways, so might as well keep it there.


I know I'm going to get flamed for wanting something that doesn't make the game as easy and braindead as possible, so go ahead.



I'm completely fine with the new system too though, I just want it to make me feel like I've made a choice. You shouldn't be able to do everything at any time. It defeats the purpose.

[Dnusha]

One step forward two steps back

[Delimit]

I don't understand why people are so upset by this... I leaped for joy when i read this. Now I can freely change between 3 specs.

This is not even close to inconvenient outside of curbing unnecessary respeccing behavior, which, let me remind you, would likely need to be balanced around, especially in the new Challenge modes. You'd have people fast-swapping constantly to get ahead and people who didn't want to macro talent changes would be left behind all because people "wanted their freedoms".

Believe it or not, this was a pretty good idea. Your freedoms would get really old, really fast, with how things are shaping up in Legion, and frankly, I like having my talents mean more in terms of having a build suited for as many situations as possible rather than having 3-4 macroed layouts that meant nothing.

So which is it? Being able to swap your specs is good, or bad? You seem to contradict yourself with your desire to "curb unnecessary respeccing behavior"

The ability to restrict the changing of talents is already in place. Have you stepped into a challenge mode lately? There's no reason they couldn't implement that into Mythic+. Who actually cares if someone is trying to swap specs and play optimally, that's not a bad thing.

You would prefer a generic lazy build that isn't optimized for anything then?

[kamuimac]

We've definitely heard much feedback to this effect, and this is something we'd been discussing quite a bit internally as well over the past couple of weeks. In an upcoming build (hopefully the next one; if not, then the one after), the respec cost is gone, and players can freely switch between all specializations with the normal restrictions of cast-time, needing to be out of combat, and so forth.

Ultimately, the intent behind the respec cost (which isn't really a new concept, dating back to 2004 class trainers) was to help reinforce a bit of spec identity through declaring a "primary" spec to which you could always return for free, and to serve as a mild gold sink. But in practice, changing specialization is a pretty significant transformation in terms of action bars, optimal gear in some cases, artifacts, and so forth, and already not something that people were taking lightly. I suspect the cost will not be missed.

An area that has appeared to need a bit more friction, however, is actually talent changes. Especially with no reagent cost at all now, it can be all too easy to activate AoE talents before larger packs of enemies in a dungeon, and then switch back to single-target talents before a lieutenant or a boss. Or someone might switch to a passive movement-speed talent when traversing an area, and then back to something functional before entering combat. At that point, we're often hardly talking about a meaningful choice at all, but rather a nuisance of extra button-presses or UI navigation before you can use your desired talents.

And so, alongside removing the respec cost, that same upcoming build will also restrict the ability to change talents when away from a safe area (defined as an area that provides the Rested state). We currently plan to give Scribes a recipe to craft a consumable Tome that can be dropped in order to allow all nearby players to retalent freely for a time - particularly useful for group play.

This has to be the dumbest idea I've seen them come up with in a long time.

There are no words...

yay yet another source of gold from my scribes ^^

but now more serious - retarded change - the cost has been moved from 30g from respec to 30 g for the item from scribe so what does that change ? nothing - retarded pseudo move

[HardlyWaken]

And, I guess, if you're unlucky to play a single dps spec of a class, instead of tuning yourself by fight per fight basis, you can go and fuck yourself instead.

Or take a little single target and a little AoE potential, based on what you know you're about to do? Is it so hard to have a tiny bit of intuition?

Regardless. Point is, if people can macro change specs as is necessary with *how* (the how is important) they've designed talents in Legion, to be more situational, avoiding the all-time best option method of WoD, there might as well not even be talents if people are going to be quick swapping between AOE, ST and "special situation" loadout with a few button presses. Literally serves no purpose to have them. Just give everyone everything and let them press the AOE skills on AOE fights and ST skills on ST fights. It would make no difference.

[jimmyjingle]

Just another example of the complete lack of understanding by current wow management. Decisions like these are what is killing the giant. Just fucking strange choices.

[Jagorath]

I don't understand why people are so upset by this... I leaped for joy when i read this. Now I can freely change between 3 specs. That's great. And no longer will we be forced into some weird elitism of needing to change our build every other major pull. The different between WoD and Legion is that in WoD there was usually a clear best. In Legion they're more situational or ST vs AOE. We would be spending an abnormal amount of time just changing specs (most would probably just make talent changing macros), which would completely delude the point of having talents in the first place. Outside of saving raiders and dungeon runners from having to change every 2 minutes, there are Inns (usually multiple) in every zone... This is not even close to inconvenient outside of curbing unnecessary respeccing behavior, which, let me remind you, would likely need to be balanced around, especially in the new Challenge modes. You'd have people fast-swapping constantly to get ahead and people who didn't want to macro talent changes would be left behind all because people "wanted their freedoms".

Believe it or not, this was a pretty good idea. Your freedoms would get really old, really fast, with how things are shaping up in Legion, and frankly, I like having my talents mean more in terms of having a build suited for as many situations as possible rather than having 3-4 macroed layouts that meant nothing.

You can switch between spec, but you're limited by artifacts.
Unless you're doing lfr or normal only, you'll still be forced to change your talents.
Have many alpha/beta boss fights have you seen ? From what i saw, there are plenty of fights that are strict aoe or st, so nothing changed much.
The points of talents is to adapt to encounter, it serves no other purpose, it's not an expression of character or any other rps trait. (wrong game for that)

[HardlyWaken]

So which is it? Being able to swap your specs is good, or bad? You seem to contradict yourself.

The ability to restrict the changing of talents is already in place. Have you stepped into a challenge mode lately? There's no reason they couldn't implement that into Mythic+. Who actually cares if someone is trying to swap specs and play optimally, that's not a bad thing.

You would prefer a generic lazy build that isn't optimized for anything then?

Switching your SPEC (specialization) is good. Free-talent changing is bad because of how talents are designed to fit different situations in Legion, which would require a lot of spec changing over the course of the expansion. It would get tiresome.

It's not about Generic and Lazy. It's about having the intuition to build what is "strongest overall" for what you're about to do (you should know before leaving the Inn what you're about to do...) and building in such a way that maximizes your potential overall. That's generally the most interesting part about "building" a build, intuition to create something that has the most benefit overall. Being able to change at every whim diminishes the point of talents to the point that they may as well just not exist in certain areas (especially ones that boil down to ST versus AOE).

[Delimit]

Or take a little single target and a little AoE potential, based on what you know you're about to do? Is it so hard to have a tiny bit of intuition?

Regardless. Point is, if people can macro change specs as is necessary with *how* (the how is important) they've designed talents in Legion, to be more situational, avoiding the all-time best option method of WoD, there might as well not even be talents if people are going to be quick swapping between AOE, ST and "special situation" loadout with a few button presses. Literally serves no purpose to have them. Just give everyone everything and let them press the AOE skills on AOE fights and ST skills on ST fights. It would make no difference.

Because talent trees aren't designed that way. There are clear divides between ST and AOE talents.

There may as well not even be talents if their only function is to punish people for choosing them and having the desire to change to another one to improve performance. The major difference there is the fact that you have to make the choice to do one or the other with talents, you're locked in to that choice for the entire time you're in combat, you can't do BOTH at the same time.

- - - Updated - - -

Switching your SPEC (specialization) is good. Free-talent changing is bad because of how talents are designed to fit different situations in Legion, which would require a lot of spec changing over the course of the expansion. It would get tiresome.

Why is switching specs a good thing? The choice should be meaningful right, why allow you to respec at all?

While we're at it, why allow characters to be resurrected infinite amount of times? That takes away how meaningful death should be, right? Put a cap on the amount of times a character can be resurrected before there is nothing left of their soul to bring back. Die 5 times? Start from scratch. Think of how meaningful your play will feel then. Died? Should have planned better.