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  1. #1

    Do you miss the old Talent System?

    Do you miss the old Talent system?

    I've been unsubbed for a while now, but I come back to WoW ever so often when they have a 10-day free trial or play a bit on my free account. I've been playing other games in the mean time, and what I notice in a lot of RPGs and pseudo RPGs is that most have very complex Talent Trees, similar to old WoW or Diablo 2. A lot of it opens up to very complex builds, and it opens up a lot of fun to playing your character very differently from anyone else, especially if you're going for a specific build.

    Wow's current talent system is very streamlined and much easier to handle, but I find it's lost a lot the charm. I remember spending hours reading up on the benefits of each talent and weighing numbers and figuring out if X talent would fit in with my playstyle and then going into the game to test it out.

    What do you guys think?

  2. #2
    I did, I miss putting half points in one tree, then the other half in the other. I have no idea why blizzard assumed EVERYONE looked up their talents. That wasn't true at all, and it removed the fun out of leveling. I remember saying "Yes, I leveled" Then i'd go straight to my talent tree. Now we get talents every 15 levels, which is quite ridiculous.
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  3. #3
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    You can, if you're inclined to, spend a lot of time reading up on what combination of talents will work best for the situation you plan to be in, whether it be solo, dungeon, raid or PVP. I was not a fan of the old +2/4/6/8 talent system because too much of it was exactly that. I wouldn't mind seeing the current one expanded a bit though to provide even more choice especially with regard to things that are associated with support roles.
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  4. #4
    The only thing I miss about it is that sense of earning something each level. Not only did you become more powerful naturally (More Health, Strength, Agility etc...) but you also got a talent point, that made you 1% better at whatever it was you choose, or unlocked a new ability.

    Earning a talent point as far as we do now does suck from a leveling point of view, but, I love it from a raiding point of view. Can't fault it, lovely system. All they need to do is figure something out to reward those leveling, and it'll be fantastic.

  5. #5
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    Yeh, from a PvP perspective they were clearly trying to make it "tailor to your playstyle" but its really even less customizable than the old one.

    Its much much much harder to balance with 3 ability changes per tier. They ran out of ideas for talents for a lot of classes, so they simply removed existing abilities from baseline to put them in.

  6. #6
    I really miss the ability to delve into three talent trees. Rogues could create some really unique builds for soloing or whatever other neat situations, hopping down to grab a couple different 21 or 31-point talents in different trees. Raegwyn's old DK soloing specs that grabbed from all three trees to get the perfect mix of survivability and dps were really cool, too. You just can't experiment like that these days, which feels like a loss.

  7. #7
    I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I do agree with Blizzard's stance on them, as if you were even mediocre at the game, you just looked up a talent build online that would net you the most dps or best pvp ability, and forget about it. When you are new at the game, you tend to put points wherever, which ends up hurting your team significantly. Now, we do get actual choices that matter depending on how you play. There are a few talents yet that are mandatory, but the vast majority ones are personal preferences depending on playstyles now.

    But I do really miss putting in a talent point every level, it just makes leveling feel alot more accomplishing. Right now, you get all your abilities automatically, and only get a talent point every 15 levels which makes it almost pointless to even have levels in the first place. All the satisfaction I get is the yay I can hit stuff/heal slightly better.

    I prefer a nice sense of progression, it feels good to have change that you yourself pick rather than an automated process.

    So all in all, I think they did some things correct, and others not so much.

  8. #8
    The Lightbringer serenka's Avatar
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    i miss earning a point every level, but the actual talent system was terrible imo, so glad its gone. i much prefer the current talents, but would like to see a point maybe every 5levels instead of 15.
    dragonmaw - EU

  9. #9
    The Insane Aquamonkey's Avatar
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    I miss the old trees, but I like being able to change talents on the fly.

  10. #10
    No, they had no real choice. Unless you really wanted to gimp your self in a group situation. All it gave was the illusion of choice.

  11. #11
    Herald of the Titans Abstieg's Avatar
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    This talent system bores the hell out of me.

  12. #12
    The Lightbringer Lora's Avatar
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    Yeah the new talent system pretty much sucks.

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  13. #13
    Mind if I roll need? xskarma's Avatar
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    Nope, not missing them much at all. The old talent trees had their good & bad points, so do the new ones. I still prefer the new ones for the fact of how easy it is to completely change your playing style, and how much choice we now have compared to before.

  14. #14
    The Insane Thage's Avatar
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    No, with a small side helping of yes. I never found talents an engaging gameplay mechanic--I looked up the cookie cutter on EJ so I wouldn't lose 30% of my DPS for clicking the wrong buttons, clicked the right buttons, and forgot they existed until I leveled an alt or a patch hit and a new cookie-cutter came up. Didn't follow the cookie cutter? Either you posted your better build on EJ and it became the new cookie cutter, or you had fun sucking. I like that the talents as they are now are more about choices between playstyle with the same end result, in theory (they do need work in practice for several tiers in several classes).

    On the flip side, they offered a regular stream of progression as you leveled where the impact was usually notable as soon as you locked the choices in. That was always pretty nifty, and I think Blizz could cater to both demographics by putting in a talent system like the old one based off of passive stat buffs/ability buffs and roll the current talents into a new Feat system (every 10-15 levels, you get a passive skill that either provides a buff or an active skill that either adds utility, replaces an existing ability, functions as a DPS/heal/mitigation cooldown, or some combination of the three).
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  15. #15
    Nope. The old talent system was useless as every spec had a build that was mathematically superior to other builds and everyone just copied that build and the subsequent gems/enchantments.

  16. #16
    I don't miss the old system at all. Even if you didn't scan the internets for the "best" talent picks, there were so many that were no brainers and practically everyone had the same ones anyway. You definitely see people lean towards certain talents over others, but a lot of talents have viable options that work better for certain fights or play styles. I also like that they made it easy to swap talents on the fly, so my character doesn't feel quite as stale.

  17. #17
    The Lightbringer serenka's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by xskarma View Post
    Nope, not missing them much at all. The old talent trees had their good & bad points, so do the new ones. I still prefer the new ones for the fact of how easy it is to completely change your playing style, and how much choice we now have compared to before.
    yeah, on some classes/specs there is still a best choice for each tier, but i feel there is more choice on most classes/specs on what i should pick on each tier. on the old system just copied the cookiecutter build and never touched it again, on the new one i change my talents round quite often because the new ones impact your play a bit more.
    i really think the new system is miles better, but would like maybe a new talent every 5/10 levels instead of 15levels.


    the old talents were really boring though with most of them being passives that were not interesting in the slightest.
    dragonmaw - EU

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Callei View Post
    No, with a small side helping of yes. I never found talents an engaging gameplay mechanic--I looked up the cookie cutter on EJ so I wouldn't lose 30% of my DPS for clicking the wrong buttons, clicked the right buttons, and forgot they existed until I leveled an alt or a patch hit and a new cookie-cutter came up. Didn't follow the cookie cutter? Either you posted your better build on EJ and it became the new cookie cutter, or you had fun sucking. I like that the talents as they are now are more about choices between playstyle with the same end result, in theory (they do need work in practice for several tiers in several classes).

    On the flip side, they offered a regular stream of progression as you leveled where the impact was usually notable as soon as you locked the choices in. That was always pretty nifty, and I think Blizz could cater to both demographics by putting in a talent system like the old one based off of passive stat buffs/ability buffs and roll the current talents into a new Feat system (every 10-15 levels, you get a passive skill that either provides a buff or an active skill that either adds utility, replaces an existing ability, functions as a DPS/heal/mitigation cooldown, or some combination of the three).
    You don't like any form of change do ya.
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  19. #19
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    The current talent system is just about non existent. The original one was more detailed and as such, more interesting.

    Just like the whole game.

  20. #20
    The Insane Thage's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by xskarma View Post
    Nope, not missing them much at all. The old talent trees had their good & bad points, so do the new ones. I still prefer the new ones for the fact of how easy it is to completely change your playing style, and how much choice we now have compared to before.
    For example, 3.0's 0/32/39 death knights. The build was so overpowered that Blizz specifically went out of their way to break it, by migrating Howling Blast and Gargoyle down to the bottoms of Frost and Unholy respectively. I don't think I've seen any builds in MoP that hit that level of broken-ness.
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