Restricted talent trees - Did I miss something?

[Deleted]

i just tried to play around with a few specs and saw that i couldn't invest points into a second tree until i had put 31 talents into my primary tree i've not heard anything about this and wondering if it's intended or not

with the original talent trees that were released, lowering the amount of talents, i had hoped that blizzard would allow for less "cookie cutter" specs by not being able to take everything but having to make choices and it seems that everyone will be rolling with the same spec and with no room for customisation.

did you want to see more customisable trees? being able to leave out a few talents to take some somewhere else for a different style of play?

[Canazza]

This was announced at the same time the new trees were announced. They've been in all the Preview Talent calculators on MMO Champion and Wowhead for some time now.

[Gazgul]

i feel the 31 point in one tree 1st allows less 'bad' specs from new players.
christ when vanilla hit i had no idea what i was doing on my warrior.

[Deleted]

its alot more room for customisation from the bigger specs, in wich there is only 1 viable spec for each tree. In the new talent tree systems, u can have choices without having "bad" spec.

[liyroot]

its alot more room for customisation from the bigger specs, in wich there is only 1 viable spec for each tree. In the new talent tree systems, u can have choices without having "bad" spec.

This so much

[Antardragon]

The first 31 points in one spec is intended. It's partly to help newbies choose where to put points and partly to make your chosen spec feel different and specialized than another spec from the same class.

Blizzard may not have completely stuck to the no-cookie-cutter promise, but there is still choice in each tree and they've gotten rid of quite a bit of those boring talents.

[Vicieus]

Im sure it was also designed this way so you couldn't have crazy op damage or survivabilty by semi into all 3 specs. Think of a warlocks soul link/siphon life on a much much much more powerful level. for pvp purposes, of course.

[Merrena]

They see you trollin, they hatin

if not, this has been out for like 4 months now

[Deleted]

This was announced at the same time the new trees were announced. They've been in all the Preview Talent calculators on MMO Champion and Wowhead for some time now.

i must have missed that in all the excitement, is it due to the mastery of trees?

its alot more room for customisation from the bigger specs, in wich there is only 1 viable spec for each tree. In the new talent tree systems, u can have choices without having "bad" spec.

not really, with the current trees you can miss a few talents and maybe lose 1k dps or so with the ICC buff and opt for different talents - that's viable, just not optimal. with the new trees we're looking at a complete lack of this and like the guy above you said it allows for less "bad" specs, solely because there's no choices to be made

all i am saying is it would be nice if, for instance, some rogues took some talents different from another rogue.. maybe he does 50dps less but has a different rotation to spice things up

i just realised this is mostly a non-issue for PvE and this is more of a PvP rant ^^,

[huth]

People always want to min-max for PvE, so yes, it is an issue.

not really, with the current trees you can miss a few talents and maybe lose 1k dps or so with the ICC buff and opt for different talents - that's viable, just not optimal

Viable... unless you want to do something like LK25 HM, were every little bit counts to prevent that valk from throwing someone over the edge.

The new trees solve this by simply not giving you the choice of taking damage increasing talents with every point.

Mastery has nothing to do with the restriction though. Talent tree design is the big reason. Blizzard wants people to go all the way down a tree, and not make weird 20/20 builds that for some convoluted reason are stronger than 31/x/x. This way they can be sure that noone can take a 10 point talent from another tree, and they can put important things there that would be to powerfull if you could take them all.
It also prevents new players from doing something stupid like distributing points across all three trees right from the beginning, since any build you can make will at least be somewhat usable for solo and small group content.

[TGS]

The talent tree's may feel like there's less choice because frankly there are less talents. But that also means less "useless" or fluff talents that serve little purpose other than a place to sink points. For the most part the same sort of choices are there. It just feels like there's less breathing room because everything is smaller and more compact. There will still be distinctively different builds.

In terms of forcing you to spend 31 points into a tree ultimately that's designed so there whichever tree you pick as your main tree is what you are. If you sink points into Beast Mastery you ARE a beast mastery hunter. If you sink points into Feral you ARE a feral druid. None of this "half and half" nonsense or most in one and quite a few in another to where if someone were to look at your talents they would have trouble working out what you actually are.

It even defines your spec in your char sheet depending on what you're working towards. I think this will ultimately be for the best even though it might seem a bit foreign to people. It gives everyone direction from the moment you get your first talent point to the moment you hit the level cap. In the original tree's the only way you'd have direction is if you already had a pretty good idea what everything did.

[Xleetskeetx]

You're never going to get people having different specs as long as the talent trees are this basic. There will always be a cookie cutter for PvP and PvE.

The only way you're going to see a myriad of viable specs is if they start changing the system to have talents you have to choose between such as "Increases Eviscerate's Damage done by 30%", "Your Eviscerate now causes the target to bleed for an additional 20% of its damage", "After you Eviscerate a target, you penetrate 10-50% of the targets armor(based on combo points) for 10 seconds", "After you Eviscerate a target you develop a hunger for blood, increasing melee haste and damage done by 2-10% for 8 seconds", "Eviscerate now inflicts a grievous wound upon the target, increasing the potency of the next bleed effect applied by 30%"

You can only choose one. They're all on the same tier. The next tier is the same design with a different ability that goes with that spec. They cost one point a piece. You have 11 points total. Every 3 or so tiers, you run into a choice between two or three new abilities(Shadowstep etc.), and you may only choose one. The final ability is alone and always taken.

[TGS]

That's not true. You'll have different specs but in reality even on Live and in vanilla there are maybe at the most 2-4 "viable" specs for each spec choice. The only exception were rogues and warriors who could specialize in specific weapons before they got combined. But yeah generally there are only 2-4 viable specs on live. So really this won't be any different... except that the various specs will be very obvious and there won't be "bad" specs. There will still be the choices.

You're never going to get people having different specs as long as the talent trees are this basic. There will always be a cookie cutter for PvP and PvE.

The only way you're going to see a myriad of viable specs is if they start changing the system to have talents you have to choose between such as "Increases Eviscerate's Damage done by 30%", "Your Eviscerate now causes the target to bleed for an additional 20% of its damage", "After you Eviscerate a target, you penetrate 10-50% of the targets armor(based on combo points) for 10 seconds", "After you Eviscerate a target you develop a hunger for blood, increasing melee haste and damage done by 2-10% for 8 seconds", "Eviscerate now inflicts a grievous wound upon the target, increasing the potency of the next bleed effect applied by 30%"

You can only choose one. They're all on the same tier. The next tier is the same design with a different ability that goes with that spec. They cost one point a piece. You have 11 points total. Every 3 or so tiers, you run into a choice between two or three new abilities(Shadowstep etc.), and you may only choose one. The final ability is alone and always taken.

[Deleted]

I tend to disagree with there being no choice. Take a look at the Protection Warrior tree, there's a hell of a lot of choice there. And even more choice as to where to put those last 10 points, I would need atleast another 5-10 points to pick up all the talents that I really like the look of.

Yes there are talents that will still be pretty much non-negotiable for raiding, but there appears to be less of them and more utility talents which will come down to personal choice whether you take them or not.

Lots of specs need more work though, but seems to be getting better with each beta patch.

[Xleetskeetx]

You simply can't make a DPS spec have choices unless you broaden the depth of single ability customization.

You may be able to choose whether you want a little more threat or a little more mitigation as Protection(which by the way is hardly any choice at all), but as a damage dealer there will always be an optimal spec that everyone will have, Cataclysm will not change this. Giving us a "choice" with what to do with two leftover points that can either go in crap talent A or crap talent B is terrible.

Also :

That's not true. You'll have different specs but in reality even on Live and in vanilla there are maybe at the most 2-4 "viable" specs for each spec choice. The only exception were rogues and warriors who could specialize in specific weapons before they got combined. But yeah generally there are only 2-4 viable specs on live. So really this won't be any different... except that the various specs will be very obvious and there won't be "bad" specs. There will still be the choices.

Viable and optimal(Read: What people who know what they're doing have) are completely different.

You can make a spec that will work because you wanted that survival talent. You missed a crucial damage talent, but you really wanted that other talent. This is viable.

You make a spec that performs substantially better than any other possible spec. You post it on forums, people test it, and it becomes the new cookie cutter that every one of that spec now uses. This is optimal.

Being "viable", as in it can still somewhat do its job but could be doing better, does not a good spec make. Taking a survival talent because you can't avoid laser beams and fire is simply and indication of a bad player.

[Deleted]

i must have missed that in all the excitement, is it due to the mastery of trees?



not really, with the current trees you can miss a few talents and maybe lose 1k dps or so with the ICC buff and opt for different talents - that's viable, just not optimal. with the new trees we're looking at a complete lack of this and like the guy above you said it allows for less "bad" specs, solely because there's no choices to be made

all i am saying is it would be nice if, for instance, some rogues took some talents different from another rogue.. maybe he does 50dps less but has a different rotation to spice things up

i just realised this is mostly a non-issue for PvE and this is more of a PvP rant ^^,

You are wrong. And il tell you why.
In current specs, you need to have the one that arenajunkyes or tankspot or whatever says u, or the raid leaders wont pick you up for a raid, you need to have the EXACT SAME SPEC as its written, to have max DPS, because raid leaders want DPS, they dont want spicy rotations for you, they dont care if you are having fun or not, they care if you do DPS, or healing, because this is why you are the chosen one, you are more efective.
In the FUTURE specs, there are the 'must have' tallents also, wich i call the spine. but there are also 4-5 talents from wich you can choose 1-2 to 'spice the things up in your preferance' but wont affect your dps. They might affect your rotations, so you would have fun, and you would dash up the DPS that the raid leaders want.

[TGS]

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here because it sounds to me like what you're saying is aimed at elitists and nit pickers. Basically blizzard's goal in cata has been to move away from the "optimal" builds and to give viability everywhere. IE with the points given and the talent structure you can make any build viable. Sure if you put 5-10 points into pvp talents and try to go pve raiding you'll be a bad player... but that's your fault not blizzard's. The key is viable builds not optimal builds. As long as things are viable (IE useful) that's enough for blizzard. And the way the system is designed should for the most part stop people from being all over the place.

In terms of the DPS spec not having choices... I think you might be a bit off the mark here. Probably because you are use to talents that are built to give x increases in x abilities and a lot of those talents. To be honest a lot of those talents were boring point wasters. Most of them are now baked in. You can spec zero/zero/zero and still do decently (With exception to tanking... crits are bad mmmk?). You obviously will not do as well as someone who has specced... but that isn't the point. The point is less talents mean more meaningful decisions for each point. I think the big problem has been that as each expansion approached we were getting more and more points and talents were becoming less and less important in the higher tiers. Hell in wrath I know I found myself having to LOOK for places to put points just so I could reach the lower tiers. I think this new system still has some adjusting to do but I think its a solid design.

You simply can't make a DPS spec have choices unless you broaden the depth of single ability customization.

You may be able to choose whether you want a little more threat or a little more mitigation as Protection(which by the way is hardly any choice at all), but as a damage dealer there will always be an optimal spec that everyone will have, Cataclysm will not change this. Giving us a "choice" with what to do with two leftover points that can either go in crap talent A or crap talent B is terrible.

Also :


Viable and optimal(Read: What people who know what they're doing have) are completely different.

You can make a spec that will work because you wanted that survival talent. You missed a crucial damage talent, but you really wanted that other talent. This is viable.

You make a spec that performs substantially better than any other possible spec. You post it on forums, people test it, and it becomes the new cookie cutter that every one of that spec now uses. This is optimal.

Being "viable", as in it can still somewhat do its job but could be doing better, does not a good spec make. Taking a survival talent because you can't avoid laser beams and fire is simply and indication of a bad player.