Talent system is a failure

[Deleted]

The cake is a lie
The reason Blizzard gave us: because there is always a "cookie cutter build"
Is a lie.

The true reason is because people are always coming up with crazy hybrid talents that are overpowered and viable and it required constant tweeking and balance changes every week to balance the game.

Truth

[Incandio]

The more you care about optimal builds, the smaller the group to which you belong. If you want to make a strong case for removing them, you need to prove that they are worthless to the average player. But you can't, because the average player enjoys the difference in play style the talents provide. It's true they could be better balanced, but it's not the case that the entire system should be trashed.

[Mawnix]

The cake is a lie
The reason Blizzard gave us: because there is always a "cookie cutter build"
Is a lie.

The true reason is because people are always coming up with crazy hybrid talents that are overpowered and viable and it required constant tweeking and balance changes every week to balance the game.

Truth

It's always a lie.

[mistahwilshire]

The cake is a lie
The reason Blizzard gave us: because there is always a "cookie cutter build"
Is a lie.

The true reason is because people are always coming up with crazy hybrid talents that are overpowered and viable and it required constant tweeking and balance changes every week to balance the game.

Truth

Grossly over-exaggerating how often this happened.

False.

New system accomplishes what was intended. Could be better, still reaches goal.

[Deleted]

Not a big fan of old talent trees and not a big fan of post MOP talents either.

The only thing I miss about old talents is the possibility to make "hybrid" builds from two different specs, even though Blizzard never let enough room to customize your character. This is the biggest problem with Blizzard recent games, they are very poor on customization, even the character creation menu is shallow, let alone talent systems or spec design. Diablo 3 customization is so awfully shallow compared to torchlight 2 for example.

Just another case of Blizzard telling players how they should play, tunnelvisionning customers in how to play a game from the leveling design (Legion is just questing annnnd... questing and only questing, dungeons and pvp and grinding offer barely no xp) to endgame (raids,dungeons,pvp or fuck off basically) and cookie cutter builds that are made on purpose by the developers for some weird reason. I mean some talents are so obviously better than other there is no way they don't realize it, they seem to think that less choice is better. Are we that stupid?

[jettzypher]

You need to understand that not everyone playing this game is centered solely on end-game raid progression where having the highest possible damage and heals being dished out is most important. Many of the talents that seemingly go "unused" have places in other situations. Some work better when leveling, playing pvp, or until you reach a certain gear level.

I regularly tend to swap talents out when going into a raid versus what I want to use when doing quests or old content. Furthermore, some talents are better suited when paired with certain gear loadouts (or in the current iteration of the game, what legendary item you may have).

Now, I do kinda miss the old talent system. If you aren't somewhere that follows every cut and paste build, it provided a great way to have a much more unique character than today's talent system. But I'll gladly take the current system's ease of being able to swap things around without needing to visit a trainer in a capital.

[Deleted]

Grossly over-exaggerating how often this happened.

False.

New system accomplishes what was intended. Could be better, still reaches goal.

Far from it, most specs have mandatory talent setups. MM hunter in particular is painfully obvious

[Deleted]

Blizzard said the new talents in Legion would be catering to new playstyles for each class. I.E. Momentum or Nemesis for Havoc DH. However, a lot of the talents have failed to do this. I.E. Arms Warrior. One set of talents to rule them all regardless of fight type; AoE/Cleave/ST. This definitely needs to be addressed in 7.1.5.

[Deleted]

Grossly over-exaggerating how often this happened.

False.

New system accomplishes what was intended. Could be better, still reaches goal.

If you pay attention to how the Talents evolved you will reach the same conclusion.

The first change was from WotlK to Cataclysm "you needed to reach the end of a tree before going to the next one"
It's an obvious solution to kill hybrid specs

I remember the Burning Crusade/ WotlK era.
There was constant patching of hybrid specs that weere overpowered.

[Deleted]

You need to understand that not everyone playing this game is centered solely on end-game raid progression where having the highest possible damage and heals being dished out is most important. Many of the talents that seemingly go "unused" have places in other situations. Some work better when leveling, playing pvp, or until you reach a certain gear level.

If what you are saying were true, there would not be a problem with talents, but in a lot of classes, there are rows that happen to have a talent that it is absolutely worthless in any of the aspects of the game.
But please note that in no way i am defending the old vanilla talent tree, i am merely saying that a system where a talent in a row has to not be taken in any situation it is a failure of a system IMO.

[Deleted]

Old talent trees were removed because there was never a "choice" there was always a optimal build.

Not everyone gives half a shag about their build being optimal. I got my Kingslayer on a DW frost tank back when death knight had 6 viable specs and a ton of sub-par, but still enjoyable, alternatives.

Its been years with the new talent system, the goal was to give players a choice and step away from "cookie cutter builds"....and really besides a few instance its been 90% the same...there was an optimal build and you ignore the rest.

Again, wrong. While the talent minitables resulted in talent choices being not interesting enough to prevent optimal builds from dominating, high end progression maniacs ended up having to swap talents between fights.

So in that sense...the talent system is a failure.

In all senses, talent system was never a failure. There were just people who loved it and some who hated it.

I don't want the developers wasting time "trying to make a each talent tier" a viable choice. Its time to bake the talents in...re-balance and move on. This feature has failed to its original goal.

Buy Blizzard. Start requiring the devs to make the game conform more to your tastes and less to millions of other people. Bang, done. Perfect WoW for you and your 2 friends.

[Allenseiei]

The cookie cutter reason is so old though... It's clear that it is almost impossible to balance everything so that there are no % disparities between talents.

What's going on now is not that there's a jack of all trades build for everything, but a highly efficient and high-response build for the type of bosses in each tier.

There are many reasons as to why certain talents are chosen over others, except maybe some outliers which blizzard knows of:

1. Type of encounter: If a raid is all about sniping priority targets mostly, for example like what happened in HFC, the "optimal" talent setup is a counter to that. All these guides that most of you read that tell you what you have to choose because you don't know your class, use this reasoning.

2. Risk - Reward: Some talents are not worth losing huge amounts of dps when you fail while they are others that do slightly less dps but are more reliable. In fact, since theorycrafters only look at simulations, many talents are chosen over others because in 500 encounters, as average, they do more damage. In practice though they may be very risky and often inconvinence your performance.

The current talent tree works wonders in the curren mythic + setup, since each week you have to change (some outliers dont) your talents a bit around since the way the dungeon works changes (for example switching from an AOE centered build to more ST build to snipe priority targets).

Talents currently exist to REDUCE the amount of utility a specc has. You can't do everything at the same time, so you have to actively choose what you want to counter and when. However, if all you do is inconsecuential content, it doesn't matter what build you use, the gear you have or if you even know your class at all.

[Dendin]

Way to aim low. "Don't worry about trying to play well guys. Just stand there and keep breathing IRL".

I'd rather they play well with sub-optimal talents than play poorly with the best. And yeah, our bar is low. We do Normal and some Heroic raids with friends. So if I can get someone to play at a decent level by using "the wrong talents" but we still kill shit, I'm going to. Why is that a bad thing?

[Cosmic Janitor]

They just replaced talent trees with a money sink for constant respeccing in some tiers to match the encounter and in other tiers we have cookie cutter talents that beat others by such margins that even people that can't operate a claculator would pick it. There are obviously some exceptions, but overall the new talents are nothing new, furthermore, calling them talents is a bit.. I would call them perks, that fits better tbh.

[Teaklog]

Old talent trees were removed because there was never a "choice" there was always a optimal build.

Its been years with the new talent system, the goal was to give players a choice and step away from "cookie cutter builds"....and really besides a few instance its been 90% the same...there was an optimal build and you ignore the rest.

So in that sense...the talent system is a failure.

I don't want the developers wasting time "trying to make a each talent tier" a viable choice. Its time to bake the talents in...re-balance and move on. This feature has failed to its original goal.

Its fun when you work to find the new cookie cutter build. There are many instances of that as well. Its hard because of WoW's age and how many simulators we have for it, but when nobody knew anything about the talent system it was fun to find interactions and build a spec around them. WoW is really just too old/we are all too good at it.

[Deleted]

Changing your talents based on the encounter. Exactly. CHANGING YOUR TALENTS. This almost never used to happen. It was pick talent X for encounter A through Z.

Clear cut improvement and not a failure.

- - - Updated - - -



It's not a joke at all. People change now FAR FAR more than ever. It's astronomically incomparable.

No it is not an improvement at all. It is the same illusion of choice we have seen before. Did you forget the dual talent specialization we got in 3.1.0? This is the exact same bullshit. but instead of swapping whole talent trees you swap between 2 talents within the same row. The result is exactly the same. The illusion of choice, unless ofcourse you want to be subpar without the cookie cutter talents on a specific encounter.

[Banard]

II'll edit my first post so people can understand...i am not advocating to bring back the old system...just the new system do not solve the old system flaws. SEE first post again.

(1)Not everyone gives half a shag about their build being optimal. I got my Kingslayer on a DW frost tank back when death knight had 6 viable specs and a ton of sub-par, but still enjoyable, alternatives.


(2) Again, wrong. While the talent minitables resulted in talent choices being not interesting enough to prevent optimal builds from dominating, high end progression maniacs ended up having to swap talents between fights.

(3)In all senses, talent system was never a failure. There were just people who loved it and some who hated it.

(4)Buy Blizzard. Start requiring the devs to make the game conform more to your tastes and less to millions of other people. Bang, done. Perfect WoW for you and your 2 friends.

so to answer some of this ...your first bullet...care or don't care about optimal build does not mean there isn't one. Removing the talents and baking them in does not change anything here. Alternative is just an illusion...and that is the argument i am trying to make.

on your 2nd point..sometimes certain classes have to re-adjust a talent or two....sometimes...not every one in the raid...especially not hunters... but in the end, how does this improve the game? How is clicking a book and clicking a talent tree before a pull = fun?

for your third point...the point of talent trees is to have alternatives ..in the old system and now...the reason they got rid of the old system was to add "choice"....but really is there choice? Or is there a optimal choice for a particular fight? That still isn't a choice.

point four..why the hate on for discussing a game we all enjoy an play? bad morning? And from this point...do you play wow because of the talent system? do you log in and say...this talent system is amazing it makes me want to spend hours playing this game? How many people select things and forget about them and barley look at them?

Nothing about the talent system is "engaging" game play.

[Maletalana]

Old talent trees were removed because there was never a "choice" there was always a optimal build.

Its been years with the new talent system, the goal was to give players a choice and step away from "cookie cutter builds"....and really besides a few instance its been 90% the same...there was an optimal build and you ignore the rest.

So in that sense...the talent system is a failure.

I don't want the developers wasting time "trying to make a each talent tier" a viable choice. Its time to bake the talents in...re-balance and move on. This feature has failed to its original goal.

I completely disagree. I will give you that, yes, there is usually one build that is 5% better overall in every situation. BUT, the reason I disagree with "the fact that is has failed" is because I can still enjoy some variety in talent builds and not be worthless.

For BM hunter, you can choose stomp, or Chimaera Shot. (I forget the other one). Apparently Stomp is slightly ahead of CS in every situation, BUT, it is not SO ahead, that enjoying using CS will get you benched from normal and heroic raids, or kicked from mythic+ groups.

Cutting edge mythic raid progression? Yes, you have to run Stomp. However, the majority of players don't need to adhere to this strict code.

Marks hunter has to use sidewinders right? NOPE, I don't. I really dislike how the rotation feels with crapwinders, so I don't use it. Is my dps 3% less that it would otherwise be? Sure, but that is not within the margin of error that would require me to change my playstyle.

"Talent system is a failure " is totally subjective, and I completely disagree.
There are instances where there is only a single choice for some specs, shadow priest with StM comes to mind, which is unfortunate. Aside from a few cases, usually there is a lot of variance.

Compare that to BC and Wrath days where you literally could only build one way to be even playable. Theres a difference between playability and fringe dps gain.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

You saw Blizzcon right?

[tankbug]

It's hard to make an RPG game competitive. You need a lot of choices so people can customize their character, but still, they must perform exactly the same in the end to maintain diversity. I don't think there is a magic fix, but then again, I don't care enough about metrics to make every talent choice based on the ultimate performance.