Monk (
Forums)
Monks don't have Nunchucks!
We asked the developers about this recently. The idea is definitely cool, but we don't currently have weapons that have moving parts quite like nunchaku. They'd require some pretty hefty animation work to get lookin' good.
Personally, I'd love to see it. But alas there are many priorities for our artists. Maybe some day? (
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Mistweaver Off-Hands
Mistweavers essentially have two weapon options: a two-handed staff, or a caster weapon and an off-hand. They won't be able to heal with Agility weapons (the monk will have no spellpower) and may not even be able to dual wield (since you can't dual wield caster weapons).
Mistweavers who want to melee a lot will do more dps with a staff (though caster staves do less damage than melee staves), but we can make sure the healing is the same whether using a staff or a healer mace / dagger / sword.
It's also not the end of the world if healer monks slightly prefer staves, since not all healers want staves. (
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Paladin (
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Paladin Talent Trees
It's cool if you found a lot of interesting choices in the 4.3 talent builds. I just want to make sure you understand that you're in the minority.
I think you mentioned paladin, so I'll throw out a few examples.
- 100% of Retribution paladins on live in North America have Zealotry. I couldn't find a single one without. It makes sense. Zealotry is decently fun and a definite DPS upgrade.
- 2% of Retribution paladins have the Eternal Glory talent. One can argue that some of those may just be user error. Maybe a few of them found the talent really useful though.
- 75% of Retribution paladins have Repentance. Okay, that starts to get a little interesting. One can assume that most paladins find the talent useful, but some find other choices more compelling. Unlike Zealotry or Eternal Glory, I would argue that Repentance is an interesting choice. Incidentally, we left it as a choice in the 5.0 talent trees.
- 20% have Selfless Healer, though if you look at players who PvP a lot, it jumps up to over 90%. Here is another interesting talent (by which I mean not a no-brainer) and it's also a talent we left in 5.0 in a modified form.
So here is another talent tree model we could have used: we could have given you 12 or more talent rows, and left some of them as no-brainers. Maybe we put Art of War up against Reckoning. I bet most Ret paladins would take Art of War. So we saved you having to make a button click and just gave it to you.
(Aside: I've said before that we do think there is room in the game for some safe choices. Sometimes clicking a button that you're 100% certain you are going to click is still fun. That kind of "choice" has its place. We just don't think the talent trees are the best place for that design, given that some of the rows are supposed to be real choices and some would just be "feel good about yourself" choices.)
There is yet another model where we somehow make Reckoning just as competitive as Art of War for Ret paladins. That might be an exciting model, but it's also pretty overwhelming both for us to develop and for you to learn and master. The combinatorial effects for even a six tier talent tree are enormous.
We aren't done with the new talent trees, but you also shouldn't assume that everything is so in flux that it isn't worth giving feedback. If you feel there are no-brainers, let us know specifically which choices you're talking about and why. Is it just a manner of number tuning? Is it a case of just your play style and that others might disagree?
(Please don't do that in this thread though -- we have a whole forum for beta class feedback, and we read all of the posts.)
With spells, glyphs, and talents being so far spread out (as well as automatically being granted spells), folks who are leveling new toons in beta aren't feeling as though their character is improving over time
Note that you’re probably getting about the same number of spells as you level up (or ideally a few less because most classes have some bloat). You are getting fewer talent choices, but as I tried to explain above, we feel like many of those weren’t real choices.
The talent system was originally implemented way back in vanilla beta to give players some ability to customize their character. We’d rather it serve that purpose than being an interesting level up mechanic. Leveling up is generally pretty rewarding on its own. It is at max level where players often find themselves getting bored. There are many reasons for that and we’re trying to address the problem in multiple ways in Mists, but letting two Fire mages standing next to each other have different talents is a good start.
I totally agree with this. There are a few interesting choices in there, but for the most part I felt like it didn't matter. I could have clicked anything and it would have made no difference.
I see this opinion sometimes, but it’s sort of a catch 22. The argument goes that if there is one obvious choice from three, then the choice isn’t interesting. I'm with you so far. But if all three choices are valid, then the argument is that the choice still isn’t interesting because there isn’t a wrong answer. I don’t think that ultimately holds water though – saying there are valid choices isn’t the same as saying the choice is irrelevant.
Let’s assume that housing prices and average pay are similar between Austin and Milwaukee. (I have no idea if that is true, but let's assume I took the time to Google average housing prices and pay scales in two USA cities and found two suitable examples.) Moving to either city might be a valid choice. There isn’t a “right” answer. But you would certainly notice the difference! Decisions don’t become irrelevant just because there are multiple valid options.
I have respecced 5 times on the beta. That is 5 more times I have respecced my unholy spec on live in a year.
Win.
I think the biggest issue, and the one you never seem to grasp in all of your silly replies, is that if I am a holy paladin, I want to make choices related to healing. If I am a ret paladin, I want to make choices related to DPS. If I am a prot paladin, I want to make choices related to tanking.
If we give you a tanking, healing and DPS choice and you are a Holy paladin, then you’re going to pick the healing one. It seems like we should just make that automatic rather than require you to pick it manually.
Or as Malis says below:
When I go to a lobster buffet I still want them to serve me rice, baked potatoes,fries, and salads that I'm not going to eat.
If you’re asking for a Holy paladin specific talent tree with 3 good choices per tier, that gets back into the issue I mentioned before, where the number of talents in the game would be insane (612 I think). Probably you'd just see a lot of +5% crit talents again.
Besides, things like survivability and crowd control are mechanics that are useful to virtually every character. One of the cool things about scenarios is that they often don’t have a tank, so stuff is attacking you more, so you have to deal with it. Survival, control and escape buttons are really useful for those.
Even in very hardcore raiding situations, the healer that worries only about healing and nothing else (including their own survival) isn’t a great contributor to the team.
and who gives a damn about the trash before said bosses
Tragically, trash do kill players and any time you spend there is less time you have to focus on bosses that night. Bosses often have adds as well.
I was unaware of any poll to back up this statement.
Miscomm. My comment wasn’t about how much players like or dislike the system. My comment was that players who come up with builds that are creative yet effective in the live game are in a very small minority. The overwhelming number of players use the same builds, which should be a pretty good indication that the system isn't meeting its goals of offering choice.
I don’t need to poll players to figure out that data, because we can just look at the data.
This example makes no sense- OF COURSE 100% of ret paladins have Zealotry, because you're forced to put 31 points in a tree to access the other two. Many players used to use mixed specs such as SL/SL or reckadin specs back when that was an option, and probably still would if it was actually possible.
I have a lot of confidence that 90%+ of Ret paladins would take Zealotry if it was in the first tier of Holy. The only reason players historically went halfway down two trees is when they found degenerate builds that were so brokenly overpowered that it was worth giving up the core abilities that we assume they have in order to function. On the other hand, if you were a Ret paladin who liked to be able to heal a little, the new talent trees should help you do that.
You're absolutely right, Mr Crab, Cataclysm talents were horrible. Instead of stripping away even more character customization and experimental playstyles, how about you go back to the perfectly functional talent system we had in WOTLK and before?
Now that data I don't have in front of me, but I'm fairly confident that the kinds of percentages I offered above would look the same for LK or BC. There might have been more variation in vanilla, but that was probably because you got worse results from Googling “Combat raiding spec” back then.
Take these new talents but put them at the bottom of talent trees. To get to the bottom of these trees, we have to click some colored boxes that do nothing. Now people will feel like they're choosing these new talents because they're clicking more boxes just like the good old times! So much customization!
Lol. We debated a system where players could choose the order they earned spells or even combat stats like haste, so long as everyone ended up with the whole package at max level. We ultimately decided that enough players would ask “Why offer a choice with so little impact?” and weren’t sure we’d get enough bang for the buck out of such a feature. (
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Shaman (
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Shamans Totems Aren't Fun
Shaman have been telling us for years that they don't find buff totems fun. Back when the shaman role was essentially to buff the other classes, the design worked okay, but now that we have moved shaman into being a "real" healer and damage-dealer, we also gave plenty of other classes and specs buff capacities of their own, which rarely have the downsides of totems. Another concern was that shaman out questing while solo felt that having to drop 4 totems every boar kill got to be a drag.
We are trying in 5.0 to shift totems over to cooldowns that are more situational but that you'll actually feel. It's hard to feel the effects of Strength of Earth Totem.
However, we have a large and diverse audience, and we understand that there are shaman players out there who enjoyed dropping 4 buff totems and that that made them feel like a shaman. It's hard to reconcile that desire with the desire of others not to have buff totems, but we hear you. (
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Warlock (
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Warlock Rotation Changes
His inference is people were doing it because they are stupid.
On the contrary, they were doing it because they were smart.
We have to balance around the rotations players actually use. Players wouldn't find it acceptable if Destro warlocks did 20% higher dps than the next closest class just because players figured out to use a spell we intended for Affliction. In that case one of two things happen -- either we somehow change spell rules and numbers such that you drop the Affliction spell, or we are unsuccessful in changing things, you use the Affliction spell, and we still have to balance your dps against everyone else. In that world, warlocks have a more complicated rotation to execute for the same dps as everyone else. That's not so cool.
It's not often a more engaging rotation either. Backdraft procs are kind of fun, but dependent on Conflag (in 4.3 anyway). If you could find a higher DPS rotation that neglected Conflag, you'd feel compelled to do it, even if that meant no Backdraft. You can find plenty of examples where players say essentially "Please nerf this rotation, because it's not fun." They're smart and know that we balance players based on actual performance (in other words we'll still make sure their DPS is competitive after nerfing the sucky rotation).
(You also have to consider how much development time we spend doing things like trying to discourage spec A from using spell Y. That is development time better spent on making your character more fun to play.)
With the concept of spec spells, we can say that e.g. Shadow Bolt is for Demonology. We don't have to worry about Destro warlocks trying to squeeze it in their rotation, because they don't have the button period.
Now having said that, I feel like I need to soften that a bit lest we get accused of overly constraining player experimentation. If smart players can find small dps improvements by doing tricky things, we're generally cool with that. Less skilled players won't be so far behind that we need to nerf the class as a whole or balance around the assumption that most players will be doing the clever trick. (
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