Vanilla Talent System

[Valech]

My point is that it's still the illusion of choice. Sure, it might be a little better tuned today, but you're still gimping yourself on aoe fights if you prefer the single target ability and vice versa.

If you had to chose between a single target ability and a aoe ability that is true. But what if you had to chose between an aoe around you, an aoe with slightly smaller radius, which you could place in a distance and, say, a slightly stronger cone attack? Surely the choice between those three would be made in regards to your personal positioning, your jobs during the fight, amount of movement in the fight and, of course, personal preferences.

[Waffen]

New one

Vanilla talents were great for separating the good from the bad, especially when end game came into play. While you had a ton of talents to pick from the end of the day there were only certain builds that were viable for end game where min/maxing was crucial to the success of your guild. Taking talents that deviated from that gimped you and handicapped your guild/group. The mass of talents also worked to gimp new players. I remember seeing my brother take all of the tier 1 Fury, Arms, and Protection talents around level 40 because, "I really need that extra armor, crit, and deflection." without looking deeper down the tree because those later talents "didn't make sense".

Its fun once in a while googling the old talent trees and looking at them for nostalgia, but in practicality, they were bad.

[Lilija]

New one

Vanilla talents were great for separating the good from the bad, especially when end game came into play. While you had a ton of talents to pick from the end of the day there were only certain builds that were viable for end game where min/maxing was crucial to the success of your guild.

Not true. In a 40 man raid up till Naxx, you needed maybe 15 people who knew what they are doing. The rest could be more or less clueless and bosses still would die. Tbh, the first time when I noticed a need for min maxing anything was Brutallus in SWP Up until then having more less an idea what buttons to press would make bosses die.

[Mauderkin]

Yeah, I'm going to have to echo everyone else here. Cookie cutter builds are much less fun than having a few viable abilities per tier.

[Dadukester]

Well thank you all for the feedback, It probably DID just seem more appealing from the illusion of being diverse and progression by getting one each time you level up. I'd like to see some changes in the new system, even if it is just adding in a few more tiers, or even just making abilities something to purchase from trainers again so that I can feel like I get something out of leveling rather than it just popping into my hot bar. It may have just been an illusion, but it made me feel warm and fuzzy

[Deathquoi]

Vanilla gave you a lot of bad choices. Wand specialization, 10% more wand damage, was an actual Arcane talent.

[Queendom]

After playing HotS, I like the 6.0 talent system, just some fun ability here and there. If "Wand Specialization" looks better for you, then I don't know what to say.
There was a slight choice in old talent trees, but 90% of them looked the same, because these were obligatory talent like instant cast Corruption for Warlocks.

It was definitely influenced by Diablo II, but it's not the same game.

[Grimreaper]

Vanilla gave you a lot of bad choices. Wand specialization, 10% more wand damage, was an actual Arcane talent.

And that was actually a usefull talent when arcane mages spent more than 50% of the time wanding the boss :P

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Yeah, I'm going to have to echo everyone else here. Cookie cutter builds are much less fun than having a few viable abilities per tier.

Well what we have currently is all the old cookie-cutter specs given to us by default and we only get to decide what to do with the leftover points. Talent trees are all gone.

[RickJamesLich]

Personally I'm not a fan of today's talent tree system as all you have to do is change the talents depending on the fight. At that point it kind of begs the question of why have talents in the first place? Why not just give players all of those abilities since they are easily able to access them? With the old system you had a sense of progression but additionally you had to be very wise about the choices that you made as you "couldn't have it all" and there may be times where you wished that you took up talents that you skipped.

[Deathquoi]

And that was actually a usefull talent when arcane mages spent more than 50% of the time wanding the boss :P

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Well what we have currently is all the old cookie-cutter specs given to us by default and we only get to decide what to do with the leftover points. Talent trees are all gone.

Arcane main spec wasn't a thing. I don't remember a single 31 point arcane Mage, almost everyone just went into arcane for clear casting.

And what we currently have is the boring stuff baked in so that our talents aren't "increase damage by 2%" bullshit choices and they actually do interesting things to our spells and change gameplay in meaningful ways. Talents like Blood Caked Blade and Critical Mass weren't interesting choices, and Talents like Master of Ghouls weren't a choice at all, they were mandatory.

[Dug]

I was not a fan of the old progression system. It was nothing but "cookie cutter" builds that gimped you if you didn't follow the exact path. Nowadays, while their are still optimal set ups it can change per fight and in PvP I find myself changing talents all the time. Back in vanilla/BC I just found an "optimal" build and never touched it again.

[Bathory]

Old system just gave the illusion of complexity. New system is fine imo.

[Pantalaimon]

Old system just gave the illusion of complexity. New system is fine imo.

Pretty much. The talent trees were filled mostly with incremental stat stick boosts baked into talent choices. Very few talents in the old system actually gave new abilities that changed your rotation. When they did change your playstyle a little bit it was comparable to what many current glyphs do. For example, hunters and iirc other classes could spec a particular way to have such things like traps or other abilities snare/slow enemy players when the untalented version didn't do that in Vanilla. Sound familiar? Plenty of glyph choices already provide that type of customizable utility for abilities. In the end there were far more busy looking talents that merely boosted damage/healing for 1-2 abilities, funneled players into specialing with a particular melee weapon, boosted hit/resists, etc.

Some of those busy talents were also completely required for more optimal performance. For example, as an ele shammy during Vanilla and BC your rotation was almost entirely a one button rotation with LB. Taking the talent to boost LB damage was a no brainer & provided no choice if you wanted optimal performance in the end game.

[Yassy]

The problem with the talent system is by the time things went several expansions in things got pretty ridiculous with how far the trees went. They started to look like an excel flowchart.

This is the actual biggest flaw with the old Talent system. They were simply going to be too large and require pruning every expansion. It had little to do with choice/customization. Choice and customization in anything competitive is always an illusion. People make that asinine ignorant comment all the time about how the old trees created an "Illusion of Choice" as if the current trees don't.

The old trees illusion was that it slammed 150+ talents into your face and said HERE DO WHAT YOU WANT, giving you the perception that you are creating something of your own. When in reality, the talent system was so straightforward that it basically told you what to do. Oh, you're playing Arms? You deal damage with two handers? Two handed spec is probably a good talent to pick up . Oh you're using swords? I bet you want Sword Specialization . Some player's felt like they were making their own choices, some saw through it. In the end it really didnt matter.

The current tree's illusion is that you swap talents so often you THINK you're making a choice. Should I go Bladestorm for this fight, or Avatar? I swapped talents 5 times in the last 5 fights, I'm clearly making choices. No, again, the decision is straightforward. You take AOE talents for AOE fights, and single target for single target fights.

Mind you there are some optimization talents that are utilityesque. Like Chi burst for fights like Gorefiend vs Chi Wave/Zen Sphere. Or Shockwave on Xhul. These make interesting choices, but it's not like they didnt exist before either.

The only choice in WoW, or anything in any competitive scene is this. Is it the most optimal, or is it less optimal. And player's will always strive to pick the most optimal. Whether its a 31/20 cookie cutter, or Clarity of Power on Single Target fights.

[MoanaLisa]

My point is that it's still the illusion of choice. Sure, it might be a little better tuned today, but you're still gimping yourself on aoe fights if you prefer the single target ability and vice versa.

If you play at the level where optimizing your character is important, it's always been an illusion that there was a choice. It's a non-argument. The whole essence of min/maxing is to remove choice.

[Demeter]

Too complex? Isnt that what we want, simple is boring! I miss the old talent systems so much, I hate this new shitty excuse of choice they added.

[cirdanx]

I let myself rant over this in the past...i will say this only: I would prefer the old tree system over the new one, because it gives me something every level, hence, the carrot on the stick that hangs over me to keep on playing. It also allowed for whacky builds just for fun. But with the option for a second spec, i always found that helpful.

New system...don´t like it, no choices, no real experimenting. Just plain boring. In my opinion, they should have stayed with the tree system, and expanded this with another layer on top of it, which was actually planned if people remember, the Titan path.

[Herz]

I don't like the current system, simply because it doesn't allow you to play mix builds for fun (not competitively, not super viable).
I remember in TBC I played a lot on my hunter alt (world pvp) and I would mix MM with Surv to get Scatter Shot, Deterrence, Wyvern Sting and Counterattack (plus Wing Clip chance to root proc) just for the extra CC vs multiple opponents. I guess the current system is better for new players and for raiding, but that's pretty much the only advantage from my pov.

[Dormie]

Old system was superior. New system isn't fun, the only choices are DPS or AoE. DoT or instant damage. Not interesting, not complex.


Again, we don't have talents anymore. Bliz duped everyone.

[Grimreaper]

If you play at the level where optimizing your character is important, it's always been an illusion that there was a choice. It's a non-argument. The whole essence of min/maxing is to remove choice.

You just nailed it. "If you play at the level where optimizing your character is important", yes then there never was much choice. But, what about all the people who dont play at that level? More than 95% of the playerbase dont play at that level or care about it, why should they not have the option to choose something besides the cookie-cutter specs? Who cares if it performs worse, thats not important for them, they want to create their own build. Why shouldnt we let them? They are going to be useless if they happen to end up in our raid group regardless, why does it matter?