Hi everyone,

I also posted this on the official beta forums, but I'm interested in what you guys here think about it, too.
Original post: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...863&sid=2000#0

I'm a person who has been playing WoW since launch, and like many other players, I believe the current 31 point talent trees could work, but need some effort.
The biggest problem right now is that we are being forced to half fill talents; 1/2, or 1 or 2 out of 3 in order to progress to the next tier. This is very much distorting the idea that we are ment to make meaningful choices in our specs.

To fix this problem, I suggest the following:

- Remove the 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 point requirements from progressing to the next tier of talents.
- As a replacement, a player will now be required to fill at least 2 full talents from each tier to progress.
- The 30 point requirement for the final talent will remain.

In practice, this is a pretty subtle change that creates a big amount of extra freedom, while respecting Blizzard's philosophy and design of each tree.

As a result, players will not have to spend 1 point on a talent they don't like, and will be allowed more flexibility to choose. As an additional bonus, the amount of shuffeling and balancing in the talent tree puzzle that needs to be done by the devs is greatly reduced, and they can focus more on improving the actual talents and ideas they have, being hindered less by a complicated puzzle mini game.

When I just thought of this idea earlier today, I decided to see how this would work out with the current 31 point Warlock trees. I chose Warlock because I know this class best, I also tried a few other trees from other classes though, and reached similar positive results.

To my amazement, I managed to spend my 31 points meaningfully in every tree, without being forced to spend 1 point on half talents, while being only allowed to spend 1 point on an awesome talent I wanted to spend more of.

As you can see below, the result in game is quite subtle, but feels far more like the player is in control, and not with that nagging feeling of having uncompleted talents with just a single point in it scattered around trees.

Results in pictures:
I used paint to show the before and after of Affliction, Demonology, and Destruction, the link below is to imageshack, but if you're scared of clicking links, I also have written a summary for each tree.

Destruction: (Aiming for a pure reaiding build)
http://a.imageshack.us/img121/7092/d...reandafter.jpg

Before:
- Already in the 2nd tier, I was forced to spend a single talent point on something I didn't really want. I chose imp. searing pain.
- In the fourth tier, I was also forced to spend another single talent point somewhere to proceed. I decided to take shadowburn because its a decent spell.
- In the 5th tier, I spent 5 points, but I would have liked to spend a 3rd point on nether protection for survivability in raids.
- Ending up with 31points spent.

After:
- I was not forced to dump a rogue point somewhere just to progress to the next tier.

Affliction: (Aiming for a pure reaiding build)
http://a.imageshack.us/img248/9990/afflictionbanda.jpg

Before:
- Affliction was already built pretty well, but "forced" the player to spend at least 32 points on the tree in order to have a satisfactoy build.
- Before the change I was forced to spend at least 1 point on improved fear, and 1 point on improved howl of terror, or 2 points on imp. fear.
- If I would have wanted dark pact, I would have probably have had to spend 33 points on the tree to have a decent build.

After:
- Managed to pick up all the mandatory talents, could pick up dark pact and was not forced to spend points on improved fear.
- Managed to create a satisfactory affliction build using 31 points in the affliction tree.

Demonology: (Aiming for a pure reaiding build)
http://a.imageshack.us/img535/2904/d...reandafter.jpg

Before:
- Demonology was a build which suffered from huge bloat in the last few tiers. I needed to spend at least 34 points in it to make a nice build from this tree.
- I was forced to put one single point in one of 3 multi point talents to proceed to the 4th tier.
- I was forced to spend another single point in a talent to progress to the 5th tier.
- I had to spend 6 points in the 5th tier because the talents there are all amazing.
- In the 6th tier, I spent 7 points because all the talents seemed mandatory.
- I ended up spending 34 points in the tree, of which there were 2 single points in multi-point talents which I didn't really want to spend there!

After:
- I spent 32 points on the tree and achieved a satisfactory build with no forced single talent point "dumps".

Please don't comment here to discuss my talent choices or specific talents in the game, please look at the mechanic of my idea.

TL;DR

- Remove the 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 point requirements from progressing to the next tier of talents.
- As a replacement, a player will now be required to fill at least 2 talents from each tier to progress.
- The 30 point requirement for the final talent will remain.