What's the point of talent trees?

[Sylar Hao]

This is not a thread to discuss where the actual talent system or the former one is better, I prefer the actual one, but that's just my humble opinion. The idea behind the actual one was so that player could get rid of cookie cutter builds and pick whatever style or talent they liked and the difference would be minimal. It's not.

For the classes I currently play (feral, destro and havoc), there's an optimal talent build for each boss, and a "generic" talent build that's best in all situations, anything else just doesn't work. For example, I welcomed very much that Savage Roar became a talent because I hated it with passion, but then, it's the optimal talent in the raw for literally every situation, King of the Jungle barely has little use in pve, only for very bursting needed moments, and Soul of the Forest has literally no use. The difference is HUGE between them. In other cases, in the same talent raw there's a single target talent, a cleave talent and an aoe talent... requiring to change according the situation...

So... what happened to that philosophy of pick whatever you want? I can understand a difference in performace between talents in the same raw of 5%, that's acceptable because perfect balance is pretty much impossible to achieve, but with differences way bigger than that, there's is no real choice, you just have to pick the right one or underperform.

But to get things worse, now we have legendaries that grant a talent to be unlocked for you...

So what's the point of talents? What direction do you think they are heading to regarding talents? Do you expect the current 3-talents per row will last seeing that artifact have a built-in old talent tree inside? Will we go back to the old talents were you could build hybrid? Or will we lose talents entirely?

[Utigarde]

The illusion of choice.

[Sylar Hao]

So... being able to pick talents for specific fights to better suite the situation is not enough? Ok, I hear your whining now I raise you: provide a solution to this?

Also, if you are the "I must pick this talent because the internet told me its better" kind, then that's your choice. Don't tell me you are forced to pick a talent because a web site claimed it was better. How do you know thats correct? Because the internet said so?

If all this optimal playing hurts you so much, stop looking at the numbers and pick the talents you like. Guess what? you are probably going to end up doing 0.032% less dps on average. Just have fun and stop listening to the internet.

The passive-aggresive is big in this one... Let's see:
- Do you really think I was whining? Maybe you should learn to comprehend what you're reading. I was just explaining what I think the current situation with talents is. Apparently having an opinion different than yours means the other person is whining...
- Being able to pick a talent to better suit a situation in particular is not a real choice, it's more like a must. Granted you can skip it and take some other talent, but you know you'll be underperforming. And not by only 0.032% as you claim, but by a huge lot. Take my example: play the very same fight 2 times as feral, one with Savage Roar+Jagged Wounds+Bloodtalons (optimal choice for 99% of the situations) and one with King of the Jungle+Sabertooth+Brutal Slash, and you'll see the difference is abyssal.
- If the talents were all of the same kind, for example, 15lvl row only talents aimed for single target, 30lvl row aimed for aoe, etc, then you could say you are actually choosing. Of course there'll always be one best, because there's no perfect balance, but at least the difference would be smaller than it is currently.
- At what point did I say anything about Internet telling me what to pick? People assuming the actions of others are funny... I've played this since vanilla, with the very same two characters, I can play them blindfolded, plus there's no need to check the internet, just test the different talents in the dummies of your class hall, to see the big difference there is between talents of the same row.

Desde luego el nombre te viene que ni pintado, demasiada agresividad simplemente por no estar de acuerdo.. wow.

[Gasparde]

The talent system as a whole is outdated. It was outdated when we had 70-point trees with '1% more fire damage' traits and it was outdated when they cut it down to 3 choices per row.

There will always be cookie cutter builds. People will always pick those cookie cutter builds. Nothing is ever going to change that.
What we're left with now is 'specialization'. You have to choose whether you want to be good at aoe or ST... sometimes. Because actually, half the specs are good at both all the time, yet 1 or 2 talents just make them even better at one. Meanwhile other specs are baseline only good at one thing... and talents don't change anything about that. Other times certain talents are supposed to increase the strength of a certain spec in a certain situation... yet said talents are so ridiculously undertuned that the situation would have to be sustained cleave with at least 10+ targets.

Talents are one of the last bastions of RPG in this game... sadly imo, because I really wish they'd just get rid of them. Talents have never been balanced, talents were never really fun, talents were ever individual and they never gave you a choice. Not once have I met someone who was like 'oh yea, I prefer to play with this talent that increases my proc chance by 5% over this talent that increases my damage by 15%!'. I've met the lazy players who decided to go down an all passive route, but that's about it. Just because there's lazy players and generally people being overwhelmed by more than 3 buttons I shouldn't be locked down to a spec with a maximum of 3 buttons.

I'd like to have Stampede back on my BM hunter. I'd never spec into Stampede over Killer Cobra. KC is a pretty basic passive that should honestly be baseline, but nope, gotta spec into that, rip Stampede because Stampede does 0 damage and BM without KC is the dullest thing ever (although I could also spec into Aspect of the Beast, giving me the benefit of super dull AND no Stampede!). Generally, if they were to make the whole BM talent tress baseline with the exception of the CC line... BM would gain like 2 more buttons and 0 noticeable gameplay changes - goes to show how dumb the BM tree is. My alts talent trees luckily don't look all that grim... but still pretty dumb. It's sad to see that I have to spec into 6% more Haste on my Ele Sham because it's the best option - same with having to give up a neat totem/sweet elemental just so my #1 damage spell has 2 charges, yay...

I'd like to take the cool talents and the cool spells they put into the game. Yet most of the Blizz just fails to create a proper balance... and doesn't seem to bother about such problems for 12 months straight. Thus I either have to decide between dealing damage or having fun and dealing no damage, which in turn means I'm not having fun. So bye cool spells locked behind bad talent choices.

They put so much effort into making raids accessible by everyone. Because... why would you implement something only half the playerbase would see. Meanwhile some of the coolest spells in game are locked behind talents no one ever picks, resulting in no one ever seeing them - seems quite contradicting.

[Makorus]

Each line should have a passive that increases ST Damage (for instance), but not by a huge amount, an easy to use ability that increases ST Damage (by a bigger amount) and a hard ability to use right, for the most ST Damage.

Sure, you have something that does more damage, but depending on the fight, it might not always be the best thing to use.

[Trollfat]

Talents diversify gameplay. And yes, there is a choice if you're not a cutting edge raider. There's lots of solo and casual content in this game. For content like BGs you can pick whatever the hell talents you like. For rated PvP, sure there's an optimal talent for each situation but you have to give up the other two choices to get it. It keeps the game balanced. You can't just give every class all of their abilities all of the time.

Yeah many talents still need work, but Legion is so far the best talent system Blizzard has ever made. And I can't speak for every class, but I think my main's talent trees are pretty good. Elemental shaman, for example, has 3 viable PvE specs in Ascendance/Lightning Rod/Icefury that are all within 1-2% of each other and have varying complexity.

The only negative thing really is that there are currently way too many passive talents that are out performing talents that add complexity to the rotation. These just need tweaking.

[americandavey]

I am still against the old talent trees, it was boring. Everyone remembers the arena season when Warriors and Druids dominated the 2's bracket. All because Druids were pointing points in Feral to spec into charge. The Paladin Tanks that spec into (Holy or Ret I cant remember) to get an ability to help tank better.

I believe the 3 row every 15 levels is outdated and should be replaced. It was ok and EASY to change based on the fight till hey lets add expensive tomes for switching because people switching talents often to counter the Boss Encounter in Dungeon and Raids.

I know people hate the AP grind, but a progression path like the Artifact weapons would be a good place to start. Something that starts at level 1 and goes through max level. Where the end is you will eventually get everything anyway.

I remind you, "a good place to start" Before the flaming.

[Gasparde]

Elemental shaman, for example, has 3 viable PvE specs in Ascendance/Lightning Rod/Icefury that are all within 1-2% of each other and have varying complexity.

And with some balancing, all 3 of these could be baseline. Without Ascendance, Ele for some reason doesn't have a proper dps CD (Fire Ele on a 5min CD doing 5m dmg is not really a dps CD). Having Asc baseline (especially with the unique visual) should be a thing. I'd love for LR to be baseline because then I wouldn't have to play the dumb 'spam CL on the same target until your keyboard breaks' - the playstyle of LR feels cool and unique, yet it's locked behind a passive. And don't even get me started on Ice Fury... maybe Ele wouldn't be so butt raped by any form of movement if we had a (balanced) baseline Ice Fury. Hell, why is the only relevant source of frost damage on my ELEMENTAL shaman locked behind a talent (Ele even has a frost relic, yet doesn't even use frost spells unless talented.... while at the same time having 50% of our damage coming as fire without fire relic slots... because logic...).

I should be able to spec away tedious things instead of having to spec fun things (best example being MM hunters Lone Wolf). I'd rather if I could cut away the things I don't like to play with instead of choosing between the things I'd actually like to play with. Personally I'd prefer a system where I can narrow down my spec from 10 to 3 buttons if I so desire instead of having a baseline 3 buttons with every additional button being a talent choice - a choice that most of the time comes at the cost of damage.

[potis]

The illusion of choice and at the same time the people that know that its an illusion and only certain talents work for certain cases have to deal with people that dont know that which leads to non-pleasant situations which leads to the endless cycle of:

"WHY ARE YOU SO BAD CASUAL" "STOP OPPRESSING ME ELITIST" and all sorts of similar stuff.

[Vaelorian]

It is ROW or TIER not RAW. Raw is something related to food being undercooked

thank you!

[MoanaLisa]

Someone said illusion of choice which is not strictly true but in practice if you mess around with talent trees that aren't part of the meta you're going to largely be playing solo. That's OK but in a game which is purportedly all about social gaming your 'choices' are limited by conventional wisdom.

Also an illusion of progression up to the point that what's in your closet and what you are wearing today and how you might improve that takes over as progression.

Neither are very satisfying over the long run. Talent trees are more a side effect of leveling than anything else. I don't miss them in WoW but there are games--mostly single-player--where they can offer some interesting possibilities for playing in different ways.

[Vyse]

the old one with 51 talents was better

/10char

[Crimewave]

Overall system is fine. Blizzard just aren't able to create interesting talents and balance them.
If you don't have to swap talents on different types of encounters - it's class design flaw and poor job by developer, not a bad system.

[MoanaLisa]

Overall system is fine. Blizzard just aren't able to create interesting talents and balance them.
If you don't have to swap talents on different types of encounters - it's class design flaw and poor job by developer, not a bad system.

Really interesting talents are difficult to balance. They are either over-powered which takes away the choice. Or they are niche by definition. Which also limits them as a choice. So talents become a lot like these square little objects that fit into a category and primarily offer a choice between conventional gameplay somewhat automated by passives or alternately, something more related to skill where the player needs to execute properly. Or something between those two extremes which is not terribly interesting either since it mostly relates to how busy do you want to be.

I don't find either passives or a requirement to press the right button at precisely the right moment inherently 'interesting'.

[Crimewave]

Really interesting talents are difficult to balance. They are either over-powered which takes away the choice.

That certainly doesn't mean they shouldn't try their best to design them better. If anything, class team should consider it as a worthy challenge.
I remember them saying that DK talents in WoD were a failure(mad cookie-cutter), but judging from my own experience, they've never really learned from it.
I believe, current talents system still have a potential and it would be silly to give it up.

[ls-]

In MMOs they're just extra fluff, an illusion of choice. In MMOs talents can't be fun and OP, and OP is always fun, because it'll cause significant balancing issues. In single player games talents may actually alter classes' play style quite significantly, but in single player game you don't need to worry about balance.

Balance and interaction w/ other players, be it cooperation or competition, are the reasons why MMORPGs aren't really RPGs.

[Charge me Doctor]

This is not a thread to discuss where the actual talent system or the former one is better, I prefer the actual one, but that's just my humble opinion. The idea behind the actual one was so that player could get rid of cookie cutter builds and pick whatever style or talent they liked and the difference would be minimal. It's not.

For the classes I currently play (feral, destro and havoc), there's an optimal talent build for each boss, and a "generic" talent build that's best in all situations, anything else just doesn't work. For example, I welcomed very much that Savage Roar became a talent because I hated it with passion, but then, it's the optimal talent in the raw for literally every situation, King of the Jungle barely has little use in pve, only for very bursting needed moments, and Soul of the Forest has literally no use. The difference is HUGE between them. In other cases, in the same talent raw there's a single target talent, a cleave talent and an aoe talent... requiring to change according the situation...

You base OP on false premise, KotJ and SotF do have uses and difference is not huge, i don't recall any sim of my wifes character when savage roar was significantly ahead. In fact, it falls down behind SotF on multitarget encounters.

So, yeah, talents point is exactly that - to tweak gameplay to your liking.You can pick whatever you need for an encounter if gameplay doesn't bother you that much, but picking, say, OOC over brutal slash for M+ because you like OOC over brutal slash will result in DPS loss

- - - Updated - - -

Also, if you are the "I must pick this talent because the internet told me its better" kind, then that's your choice. Don't tell me you are forced to pick a talent because a web site claimed it was better. How do you know thats correct? Because the internet said so?

It's the case of WoD blood talons of ferals and rune tap of blood DKs - internet told pick these talents, but didn't tell me how to use them! I've seen so many ferals who simply didn't use healing touch on procs or wasted BT procs on shred instead of rip or rake. Same goes for DKs who simply didn't use blood tap at all or wasted runes because of it

[Master Guns]

I mean, it really is just an illusion of choice, because 90% of the time, you never change talents. Only for very certain situations. And even then, a lot of classes have the most optimal choice pretty much a cookie cutter choice so that there's no need to ever even look at your talents once you set them.

The truth is, there will ALWAYS be a "best" option, and that's what everyone will take. That makes the illusion of choice pointless.

[MoanaLisa]

That certainly doesn't mean they shouldn't try their best to design them better. If anything, class team should consider it as a worthy challenge.
I remember them saying that DK talents in WoD were a failure(mad cookie-cutter), but judging from my own experience, they've never really learned from it.
I believe, current talents system still have a potential and it would be silly to give it up.

I didn't say they should stop making talents. I said that really interesting and unique talents tend to be either over-powered or really niche-like. Personally, I'm with you: I would love to see some talents that actually change the way you play the game. But game metas are real and taking talents that don't fit into what people think is the 'normal' way to play only leads to them being ignored. Unless they are over-powered in which case they become mandatory and less interesting. Mostly it's a very difficult thing to do. But yeah, off-the-wall talents would be great in my view. I'm not an idiot though and totally realize that anything that is viewed as too out-of-the-mainstream will just be bitched about. Endlessly.

[Charge me Doctor]

- Being able to pick a talent to better suit a situation in particular is not a real choice, it's more like a must. Granted you can skip it and take some other talent, but you know you'll be underperforming. And not by only 0.032% as you claim, but by a huge lot. Take my example: play the very same fight 2 times as feral, one with Savage Roar+Jagged Wounds+Bloodtalons (optimal choice for 99% of the situations) and one with King of the Jungle+Sabertooth+Brutal Slash, and you'll see the difference is abyssal.

Just FYI, playing same fight two times with same talents will result in different DPS. Worst-case vs best-case difference will be ~10% DPS