Upcoming talent change gutting

[Dagzter]

65 pages later tells me I'm right this was a bad design call.

It is unquestionably a bad design call as the proposed changes sit in direct contradiction to the talent design philosophy they have champion since MoP. Ironically, this very talent design philosophy, which has been built from the ground up with the concept of talent switching as a response to the varying encounters the player is faced with in the game world, has actually become more entrenched in Legion. This is evidenced by the fact that certain fundamental aspects of each spec's toolkit, such as appropriate AoE abilities or burst dps cooldowns, have been re-allocated to the talent system. Moreover, there has also been a clear and conscious effort on the part of the developers to have single-target, AoE and cleave talents actively compete with one another on individual talent rows - thereby promoting the idea that one should switch in-line with the requirements of the encounter at hand, should one wish to play their class to its full optimal potential of course.

What you've seen from certain proponents of this change within this thread is a desire to minimize this level of talent swapping, in order to return to an era where we each selected a standard build, usually reflecting a satisfactory middle-ground for each spec, and stuck with it - the consensus appears to be that subscribing to these established cookie-cutter builds reinforces class-identity. That's a perfectly valid opinion to hold, I guess, and I have no issues with players expressing that desire; however, it does not alter the fact that these proposed changes sit in contradiction to the system they have built, developed, and iterated upon over the last three expansions. I suspect they are really going to need to heavily re-assess the talent system if they do wish to go down this regressive line, but it is surprisingly late in the development of Legion for this jack-knife in their philosophy to suddenly emerge, and even later for them to make the necessary changes to relevant talent rows across all specs to ensure that the player-base isn't unduly penalized for it.

[Flashbang]

Just remove the talents all together and give us a pick from them as passives. What is the point of a talent system designed to make us more powerful in different ways and then make it prohibitive to change. Playing solo and having to hearth home to swap a talent and then ride back to where you were and continue seems nothing more than a waste of time and effort. The only up side for raids will be more positions for locks so that you can resummon everyone when they hearth home because they made the tome expensive to make.
Good Job Blizz, way to understand how your consumers want to play the game.

[Deleted]

The tome is cheap - only 10 rare pigments (I assume the 10 are rare). No other special ingredients at all. Assuming it's similar to WoD regarding rare pigment generation, it's around 1 darkmoon card. Any guild worth its salt will have multiple stacks of this in the raid utils tab. All the crying, for nothing.

[RobertoCarlos]

What you've seen from certain proponents of this change within this thread is a desire to minimize this level of talent swapping, in order to return to an era where we each selected a standard build, usually reflecting a satisfactory middle-ground for each spec, and stuck with it - the consensus appears to be that subscribing to these established cookie-cutter builds reinforces class-identity.

Pretty much. And its completely lost on me why someone would think this is a good move or somehow strengthens class fantasy.

[Elestia]

Nothing wrong with this. Maybe now I can stop having to give a rat's ass about what the optimal talent layout is for all 15 raid bosses...


Or maybe now that it's a resource you'll have one opportunity to change spec... so you'll be expected to know what to switch to...ugh.

[Summer]

The tome is cheap - only 10 rare pigments (I assume the 10 are rare). No other special ingredients at all. Assuming it's similar to WoD regarding rare pigment generation, it's around 1 darkmoon card. Any guild worth its salt will have multiple stacks of this in the raid utils tab. All the crying, for nothing.

Absolutely right it won't hurt guild raiding but think about pugs :P Or just soloing, leveling etc. where popping this isn't practical for most people :P

[Raiju]

Nothing wrong with this. Maybe now I can stop having to give a rat's ass about what the optimal talent layout is for all 15 raid bosses...


Or maybe now that it's a resource you'll have one opportunity to change spec... so you'll be expected to know what to switch to...ugh.

I imagine icyveins will have a simple enough talent tree you can stick to if you aren't that involved.

[Terahertz]

I actually kind of like this change. I never liked the design of being able to switch talents on the fly for any situation you wanted. They might have as well given us access to all the talents at that point and it would barely have made a difference. There was basically no difference between this talent system and the previous ones in terms of personal customization because you still had to play cookie cutter builds in order to stay relevant in certain situations.

But then again that's also sort of the flaw of the current talent system in that you have to pick between aoe and single target talents on the same row.

[Deleted]

Nothing wrong with this. Maybe now I can stop having to give a rat's ass about what the optimal talent layout is for all 15 raid bosses...


Or maybe now that it's a resource you'll have one opportunity to change spec... so you'll be expected to know what to switch to...ugh.

You will still care about talent builds if you don't want to be crap, that's the way Legion talents are designed. You will just have to jump through extra hoops, that's all.

There's no optimal talent build for 15 bosses. The talent trees are designed to make you change them between bosses.



If you don't then you are gimping yourself, and more than if you turned up to raids and never used pots/flasks/food/runes.

Not giving a rats ass about talents was fine for Draenor talents, because they were all much more about style of play, they didn't matter much on the whole, although there were a few that were pretty much mandatory, generally Blizz made them style ones, or made the three on each row pretty much equal value so you could pick what you wanted without being penalised

Legion ones are like that. For me - affliction - taking Sow the Seeds will be absolutely mandatory for AOE. And switching it for something else on the same line will be absolutely mandatory for everything else.

Talents are much more critical to performance in Legion, they are much more situational, and they have often replaced baseline abilities.

If you don't talent switch, you will suck in raids. End of. The talent system is designed to enforce that.

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I actually kind of like this change. I never liked the design of being able to switch talents on the fly for any situation you wanted. They might have as well given us access to all the talents at that point and it would barely have made a difference. There was basically no difference between this talent system and the previous ones in terms of personal customization because you still had to play cookie cutter builds in order to stay relevant in certain situations.

But then again that's also sort of the flaw of the current talent system in that you have to pick between aoe and single target talents on the same row.

I very rarely changed talents as any of the warlock specs in Draenor. It wasn;t required, because most of them were style related with little relevance ot performance or situation, the few that weren;t, you would never not take.

[Aggrophobic]

65 pages later tells me I'm right this was a bad design call.

You didn't need a forum post to see that. How Blizzard did not see it befor they even posted about the idea is mindboggeling.

Now that we have the cost of that thing, I mean it's going to be ridiculously expensive the first months or so, at least and it'll still make dungeons something most people can't afford doing for the entire expantion.

Why would you ever have a syetem like this? Why?!

[Deleted]

Can't wait to be forced to have at least 1 scribe in Mythic + to be anywhere even close to competitive

[Raiju]

Can't wait to be forced to have at least 1 scribe in Mythic + to be anywhere even close to competitive

Item isn't BoP

[JustRob]

You didn't need a forum post to see that. How Blizzard did not see it befor they even posted about the idea is mindboggeling.

Now that we have the cost of that thing, I mean it's going to be ridiculously expensive the first months or so, at least and it'll still make dungeons something most people can't afford doing for the entire expantion.

Why would you ever have a syetem like this? Why?!

Better go level inscription on one of my characters

[Deleted]

Item isn't BoP

god bless, missed that.

[Sammonoske]

It's almost like they said when they announced it they said it would be in the next build.

The build being only days after they had made the announcement to the change. They not only ignored the feedback, they had to have rushed (by their standards) to get it into the build.

[Raiju]

The build being only days after they had made the announcement to the change. They not only ignored the feedback, they had to have rushed (by their standards) to get it into the build.

No, they had it planned before they announced it and announced it in anticipation of the build going up. They do not work on the builds that go up that week - they tend to be 3-4 builds ahead.

[Dhrizzle]

Absolutely right it won't hurt guild raiding but think about pugs :P Or just soloing, leveling etc. where popping this isn't practical for most people :P

PuGs, soloing and levelling content really shouldn't require talent changes. It's these players who should feel lime their talents are a meaningful choice as they will be locked unless the player wants to spend time returning to town or gold on the item.

In theory players who do need to change talents a lot should be splitting the costs between their group making them negligible.

[kamuimac]

If you don't talent switch, you will suck in raids. End of. The talent system is designed to enforce that.

i wonder why people focus so much only on raid when it will have equaly crushing and disaster effect for climbing up mythic + dungeons levels -_-

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Why would you ever have a syetem like this? Why?!

because they are incompetent - but lets face it if they didnt fire 3/4 of dev team after disaster of WoD wtf would they care now :/

[Deleted]

They should just delete Scribe from the game, it's been a dying profession ever since glyphs started to fade and not try to come up with bullshit like this trying to make it relevant again rofl.

[Aggrophobic]

Better go level inscription on one of my characters

Already done... No intrest in the profession but it's mandatory for any end game content now.