Upcoming talent change gutting

[Ragnarocket]

Like someone would forget how to wield a sword and shield instead of a two-handed axe. And they had to be in a special 'remembering zone' to remember...

This is the opposite of RP.

It's the opposite of RP? The idea is you go back to town, spend some time setting your arsenal/spellbook/whatever up and then head into the fortress with your pre-set abilities ready to go. That's almost the definition of how things like mages work in games like D&D. You don't just get to use a micro-set of abilities from your entire spellbook and then swap it up when you feel like it.

But no, swapping it up between packs of mobs...THAT makes sense in an RP setting.

I'm not going to argue the good/bad reasons of why this should or shouldn't work in this post. But come on, saying that swapping abilities between mobs makes MORE RP sense than going back to a safe zone and setting your stuff up is a bit silly.

[Lightup]

Ok I'm going to cover why this change is bad from a few angels

First of for the people who says it's going back to vanilla, tbc, whatever it's far from what the game use to be, back than you had a cookie cutter build for your spec and you didn't mess around with your talent (that's the main reason they changed the talent system to what we know now)

To the people who says it make inscription worthwhile this is the laziest way they could have done that. Instead of putting some work on the profession they decided inscription will make the game less tedious. An example would be removing repair from vendors and putting it on blacksmiting so only blacksmiths can repair and item it make blacksmithing worthwhile but everyone else has to suffer because of that

To the people who says you don't need to change talents for trash, in the post blizzard said they don't like people changing talent for trash if it's not that big of deal why are we changing it in the first place? also with the new challenge mode system if you don't change talents you're losing time which could cost you the entire Run you just put effort into

*for the guy who said just make talent row have similar effect so people chose how the would like to play that didn't work they have been trying to balance that for the past 2 expansion and it always end up with what is the strongest most efficient one and everyone end up running with the same talent

And finally to the people who says it's not that big a deal why change it in the first place if it won't effect much why cripple people choice in the first place

This change contradict their entire philosophy regarding the talent system and it makes for an inconvenience just like the gold for respecing was just remove it and be done with it

I'm adding this to the list RPG value? Out of all the thing they could do to add RPG elements to the game this is by far the laziest one.
Why not allow melee to have range weapon like they use to? it's more RPG value than the change and it's not a pain in the ass.
Or maybe add sub races?

[Neversage]

In all fairness you don't have to hearth every time, you can use the inscription item.

Why is it a problem all of a sudden? It hasn't been for like half of WoWs lifespan.

I think Blizzard is trying to return to some of the roots of vanilla in a few ways, especially in response to a lot of the complaints about the over-convenience of the current game. In WoD, talents feel like mutually exclusive abilities rather than playstyle-defining choices. Balancing non-cookie-cutter builds alongside meaningful choices without making the whole experience feel frustrating is rough. I hope they come up with a good solution that satisfies all points.

[clevin]

The biggest issue here is not really the change (which I dislike). It's that the team feels the need to fuck around with the way we swap specs and talents. How much time is wasted on this and things like this? Do they really not realize that if they put both a single target talent and an AOE talent on the same line that yes, we'll want to switch? Why go "so we're removing the tome cost for talent switching (which has worked fine) but now you need to be Rested or have this special thing nearby?

I wonder how much of content drought is the sum of all the things they end up screwing around with - stuff that isn't broken in the first place but someone wants to tweak it to justify their job.

[deadman1]

I think Blizzard is trying to return to some of the roots of vanilla in a few ways, especially in response to a lot of the complaints about the over-convenience of the current game. In WoD, talents feel like mutually exclusive abilities rather than playstyle-defining choices. Balancing non-cookie-cutter builds alongside meaningful choices without making the whole experience feel frustrating is rough. I hope they come up with a good solution that satisfies all points.

Simply switching it to changing specs instead of talents would be a much better middle ground I think. Plus that goes with their original philosophy for Legion.

[judgementofantonidas]

inB4 all the people who never leave the vacinity of the auction house say "but you raiders wanted vanilla". w8 I am 2 L8

[Arbs]

Ohh sorry about that

It is all good dude.

[Deleted]

Good thing i'm playing a mage so i can just teleport back to respec. This doesn't solve any raiding "issues" because raids would just have people teleport back to city and take a summon back before every bossfight. It will simply make it more annoying. Other games don't have respec costs and simply let players play their class.

I think the only solution is to have a respec cooldown - too restrictive to respec between fights but enough so that we can use it in specific situations.

[Dhrizzle]

That's exactly what talents in this expansion are though. Look at them - we've clearly switched back from talents being roughly equal to each other on each line and therefore being style choices (to avoid the alleged "mandatory talent build" problem), to a talent system where each line has some serious choices

If you have a boss that has say AOE, you will absolutely have to take the AOE talents. If the next boss is single target, that means you will absolutely have to change talents, because the AOE and ST enhancers are almost all mutually exclusive.

Raiders who don't will - deservedly - lose their places, because it will be worse than not having food/flasks/pots

Outside of raiding and dungeons, talents are largely irrelevant, for world content they don't matter, just like levelling your artefact won't matter.

This change means any decent raider will have to carry bags of whatever reagent they are going to impose, and it sounds like they are not going to be like the current tomes are. I bet they will attach it to inscription or something.

Why? Because it's a very cheap way of increasing the number of hours people are logged in to play. Like having to farm the mats to make pots because it makes stuff like gathering herbs or doing alchemy "worth it"

Doesn't it mean that the raid as a whole will have to carry enough to respec once for each boss, maximum?

[Mafic]

The biggest issue here is not really the change (which I dislike). It's that the team feels the need to fuck around with the way we swap specs and talents. How much time is wasted on this and things like this? Do they really not realize that if they put both a single target talent and an AOE talent on the same line that yes, we'll want to switch? Why go "so we're removing the tome cost for talent switching (which has worked fine) but now you need to be Rested or have this special thing nearby?

I wonder how much of content drought is the sum of all the things they end up screwing around with - stuff that isn't broken in the first place but someone wants to tweak it to justify their job.

Yeah it seems they are re-arranging chairs and call it new content to justify keeping their jobs and increased team.

[Drusyn]

Good thing i'm playing a mage so i can just teleport back to respec. This doesn't solve any raiding "issues" because raids would just have people teleport back to city and take a summon back before every bossfight. It will simply make it more annoying.

This will be incredibly stupid if no one has the scribe item in raid lol.

Kill boss -> clear trash -> open portal -> summon back -> Kill boss -> clear trash -> open portal -> summon back

[Jagorath]

I wonder if Watcher himself understand what a hogwash this change is and he's simply being a spokesman for the team ?

[deadman1]

I wonder if Watcher himself understand what a hogwash this change is and he's simply being a spokesman for the team ?

Hes one of the game directors so it's doubtful that hes speaking for others.

[Sci Fi Samurai]

More like one of the best ideas Blizzard has had in a long time. Puts at least a bit of RPG back in this MMORPG.

Yeah, I like the part where people complain that the world in the World of Warcraft has progressively become insignificant, and yet one thing is introduced that is thematically sensible but moderately inconvenient to raiding and it's the stupidest thing in the world.

[deadman1]

Yeah, I like the part where people complain that the world in the World of Warcraft has progressively become insignificant, and yet one thing is introduced that is thematically sensible but moderately inconvenient to raiding and it's the stupidest thing in the world.

Not the same people making those remarks, different people with different opinions.

- - - Updated - - -

@Mush you understand 'or whatever' is as obvious as it's going to get for pointing out the list was non-exhaustive and they explicitly stated the conditions - not stating cities, sanctuaries, or anything merely places that give rested.

Hence why I just said I will agree with you for the sake of argument.

I'm agreeing with you I don't see the issue.

[nazrakin]

No that isn't how progression raiding/c modes work.

If everyone is speced for a single target fight and the next one is AoE YOU HAVE TO SWITCH.

Also the "someone else will do it" mentality is horrifically bad no matter what the setting is.

This makes me wonder if they shouldn't just trash the entire concept of a talent tree. If every class is balanced around the optimal talent arrangement anyway then what is the point of even having these choices? If its a single target fight then you will take the ST talents. If its an AE fight then you'll take the AE talents. That's more of a quiz wheres there is a right and wrong answer instead of a preference where you have the freedom to fine tune your abilities.

They might as well just bake it all into the baseline design and stop pretending like any of it actually matters. Hell, the game would be better off for it since there would be a lot less dev time spent on a ton of empty choices.

[Coffeh]

I have less of a problem with this than I did the previous iteration of having to pay for every time you changed your spec. I do understand the point Watcher is trying to make about meaningful talent choices. Here's the problem: not all talent trees are created equal. Or specs, for that matter. Some talent trees make huge changes to how a spec plays. Some spec core design are rather limited in terms of single target vs, aoe, or mobility, or survivability, etcs. Whereas other specs are more well rounded. The talent choices of say..a ret paladin have a massive impact in different scenarios, whereas the talent trees of another spec are more about flavor and have a far smaller impact. Thus, this change is a much bigger detriment to some specs than others. Can Blizzard fix this by changing core abilities and talents? Yes. Will they? History says no.

[Monteverdi]

Am I the only one who doesn't mind this?

[Delimit]

That's more of a quiz wheres there is a right and wrong answer instead of a preference where you have the freedom to fine tune your abilities.

They might as well just bake it all into the baseline design and stop pretending like any of it actually matters. Hell, the game would be better off for it since there would be a lot less dev time spent on a ton of empty choices.

Which is a big portion of min/maxing your performance, which many people enjoy. Not everyone is picking the proper talents for each fight, and sometimes you need to be able to adapt because of a shortcoming in the raid.

Baking things into baseline won't remove dev time, because they still have to design the abilities. Those abilities are a big part of the carrot that gets rolled out for every expansion. One of the carrots for Legion was the ability to change to those talents when necessary without the hassle of tomes, they've now backtracked and want to make it more difficult.

[MasterHamster]

Am I the only one who doesn't mind this?

WoW has been stuck in a slippery slope design paradigm for so long that every time Blizzard tries to take a step back to re-assess previous changes, it's doom upon us.

These changes serve a very important purpose, but nothing is final yet and I'm not going to make a final call. But yes I do see the overall implications of making talent switches more of an actual consideration and choice again. But sure, if this makes raiders stand in front of a boss and wait for a cooldown to switch talents, then it's shit. If it ends up so restrictive people feel like they are forced to play subpar for prolonged amounts of time, then it's shit. This is a balance issue, not an overall change issue. Making your spec/talent choices feel like an actual specialization adds a lot to the game's depth. That has been lost as the only thing stopping you from adapting to any situation is to leave combat for a couple of moments.

But if it removes the threat of having people feel like they should switch talents every single pull (because switching is too fast, too cheap and too convenient) then the change serves it's purpose well. This is a subconscious change. And those are very hard to argue for.

It's like arguing against raid bosses dropping more loot. But we all want loot! Why do you want to slow people's gearing down! Artificial prolonging of content!
No, that serves the purpose of stopping raid rosters from getting geared in 3 weeks and then having no other progression than a higher difficulty level.

Same thing. Psychological game design, one could call it. Blizzard has made so many things in the game so convenient that few things feels significant anymore. Making people feel like their choice of talents has some consequences, making them feel like they should consider the tasks ahead and prepare, instead of feeling "ah next world quest is that guy that has multiple adds, woop change instantly"

This change is one of many Blizzard needs to do to restore that feel that your character is something you've invested in to progress as far as you have. By itself, yes this is an annoyance to some. If Blizzard manages to reassess some of the slippery slope convenience changes they've made over the years this can take us back to the times when WoW actually felt like a MMORPG, not a drop-in-and-play action RPG.