Upcoming talent change gutting

[Dianthe]

As long as the fights in this game require either ST or AoE abilities (be that healing or dps) and mobility vs. survival abilities which are obtained via a choice of talents, and the fight mechanics are balanced around said abilities, the offered solution to make talents "meaningful" is ridiculous at best, and absolutely bonkers are worst.
You can't possibly develop fights based around people playing with a certain set of talents, then tell people "oh but you need to go back to town before each fight to swap said talents". That is not good game development, that is a lazy, lame way for the devs to say "but look, we did something with the talents!".
And before people get their panties in a bunch - I've been playing since Vanilla, and been through all the variations of talents and respecing. Do I think this is the best they can do with talents? Not really - but I would rather they spent their time coming up with actually decent talent choices (I'm looking at you holy priest talent tree) instead of pulling out these meaningless changes that do literally nothing to impact the game experience in a positive way. Because honestly - who stands there questing, realizes they cannot finish the quest without some aoe talent, then realize they need to ride for 6 minutes back and forth to respec in order to be able to clear out the cave they were questing AGAIN to finish the damn quest? Nobody, that's who.

[friedmudkipz]

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.

Not every fight is a black and white choice between "ST" or "AoE". Furthermore, not every talent is completely binary choice between "this is best for AoE" and "this is best for ST". Many fights and talents have a lot more intricacy to them than that, and being able to fine tune your damage output for many potentially disparate situations is really important for anyone who enjoys raiding competitively.

[Dhrizzle]

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

Personally I prefer it to the idea of paying to change specs even though the new system probably affects me more.

[Pony Soldier]

Lol wtf. To me this sounds like they once again "fixed" something that wasn't broken. They turned something simple into something more complicated. I mean the amount of gold needed to change specs was hardly anything and matter of fact I hardly ever change specs anymore anyway. If I want a tank I'll make a character specifically for tanking if I want a healer I'll make a character specifically for healing. I can't even remember the last time I switched specs. Might've been back in the early MoP days. Until they find a way so that you don't have to be carrying around your tank gear all the time I will probably never use it. This one one of the main reasons why I stopped using it.

[clevin]

As long as the fights in this game require either ST or AoE abilities (be that healing or dps) and mobility vs. survival abilities which are obtained via a choice of talents, and the fight mechanics are balanced around said abilities, the offered solution to make talents "meaningful" is ridiculous at best, and absolutely bonkers are worst.
You can't possibly develop fights based around people playing with a certain set of talents, then tell people "oh but you need to go back to town before each fight to swap said talents". That is not good game development, that is a lazy, lame way for the devs to say "but look, we did something with the talents!"..

This is the issue. All of you talking about how this is like TBC and Vanilla... no, it's not because the talent trees are different and for some specs they've done things like making you choose between an AOE and single target talent. Early trees weren't like that - you could spec to increase, say, Crit, but the spells themselves were AOE or ST.

- - - Updated - - -

Personally I prefer it to the idea of paying to change specs even though the new system probably affects me more.

And I don't see why they need to mess with how we switch specs and talents at all. There might be some thing I'm missing around artifact mechanics that affects this, but it feels like they're altering this stuff just to make it different. Given that they are in a huge content downtime, is it really worth screwing around with this stuff?

[thrill]

Stop making people pick between single target and AoE in the same row and the vast majority of the issue goes away.

[Grimreaper]

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

You dont mind sitting on your ass waiting for half the raid to heartstone out, respec, get summoned back, purely for the sake of inconvinience, before every boss, then yes thats probably just you.

Like i said, they might aswell have simply put a 1 min casting time on switching talents. It's no different.

[Ragnarocket]

You dont mind sitting on your ass waiting for half the raid to heartstone out, respec, get summoned back, purely for the sake of inconvinience, before every boss, then yes thats probably just you.

Like i said, they might aswell have simply put a 1 min casting time on switching talents. It's no different.

I wish people would stop making it THIS big of a deal. There will be something you can place in front of the boss like a feast that will allow everyone nearby to modify their talents.

[Krom2040]

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

I think it's fine, I have no issues with it. Shuffling talents around all the time is a pain in the ass anyway.

[Dhrizzle]

And I don't see why they need to mess with how we switch specs and talents at all. There might be some thing I'm missing around artifact mechanics that affects this, but it feels like they're altering this stuff just to make it different. Given that they are in a huge content downtime, is it really worth screwing around with this stuff?

As they explained, they want there to be a bigger sense of importance when it comes to some aspect of character customisation. The gold cost for changing specialisation was unpopular so now they're looking at making talent choices final unless you spend time/gold on an item or return to a safe place (rested zone.)

Are you really asking if it's worth the time finishing systems for Legion a few months before Legion launches?

[Drusyn]

I wish people would stop making it THIS big of a deal. There will be something you can place in front of the boss like a feast that will allow everyone nearby to modify their talents.

unless no one has it

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I think it's fine, I have no issues with it. Shuffling talents around all the time is a pain in the ass anyway.

Do you have the addon "Quick Talents"?

[bewbew]

I've concluded argueing this is pointless, some people have no grasp on game design or the idea of Talent System being a CHOICE that is supposed to be, indeed, restrictive - Pick THIS out of these, you can't have it all.

Spoiled brats.

[Kurve1776]

I wish people would stop making it THIS big of a deal. There will be something you can place in front of the boss like a feast that will allow everyone nearby to modify their talents.

A completely unnecessary step when the talents are designed around individuals switching out of combat on the fly to best combat upcoming situations.

[threads]

I wish people would stop making it THIS big of a deal. There will be something you can place in front of the boss like a feast that will allow everyone nearby to modify their talents.

because it's retarded to have to ask someone to drop one every time i want to change my own character's talents.

seriously this system was fine before this is just a joke.

[Traveler Voltin]

how about blizzard stop being stupid with the extremes for once in their damn life?
makes me want to punch them now.

[Ragnarocket]

unless no one has it

A completely unnecessary step when the talents are designed around individuals switching out of combat on the fly to best combat upcoming situations.

because it's retarded to have to ask someone to drop one every time i want to change my own character's talents.

seriously this system was fine before this is just a joke.

Ok, apparently no one read what I was responding to so...thanks for that.

The issues you all are bringing up are different than claiming "There's absolutely NO other way to change talents than hearth to Dalaran, swap, and get ported back!". I was just correcting something that was factually wrong. They stated that there are items to change your talents with. Debate amongst yourselves about the legitimacy and proper costs of such a thing...

[threads]

I've concluded argueing this is pointless, some people have no grasp on game design or the idea of Talent System being a CHOICE that is supposed to be, indeed, restrictive - Pick THIS out of these, you can't have it all.

Spoiled brats.

there's no choice when it's literally single target vs aoe talents.

nobody wants to be the retard using aoe talents on a ST boss.

[Kurve1776]

I've concluded argueing this is pointless, some people have no grasp on game design or the idea of Talent System being a CHOICE that is supposed to be, indeed, restrictive - Pick THIS out of these, you can't have it all.

Spoiled brats.

Except the current talent system is designed around accessibility and picking the best talent for each situation on a per-player basis. Adding this extra restriction shits all over the way the talents are currently designed and just makes it a headache. It benefits no one in any positive way to have to stop the entire group for 1 person needing to switch a single talent.

[Gersemi]

Now what about in PvP? Before a RBG starts I like to change my talents depending on the enemy team. Why is it a bad thing to swap talents around often? It's not a nuisance, it's adaptability.

[clevin]

As they explained, they want there to be a bigger sense of importance when it comes to some aspect of character customisation. The gold cost for changing specialisation was unpopular so now they're looking at making talent choices final unless you spend time/gold on an item or return to a safe place (rested zone.)

Are you really asking if it's worth the time finishing systems for Legion a few months before Legion launches?

No, I'm asking whether this change is worth it. They didn't have to mess with how we spec swap and talent swap AT ALL. Leave the Tome cost for talent swapping. Leave spec swapping as is. If you'd thought for a minute that meaning was obvious but like most here, you just want to try to appear smart. You failed at that this time.

AS for 'a bigger sense of importance' - why? It's still not really hard, it's just inconvenient and annoying. These changes do nothing but waste time and annoy people.