Current State of talent trees... Pointless

[Rotomon]

After spending a couple days playing another game (wont say but im sure you know what one) i find my self Disgusted with World of Warcraft Talent Trees as is.

Why do they even give us points to spend in the talent trees when they restrict us so much currently.

You could put every character of the same spec side by side and right now id almost bet anything that they are identical within 1-5 points.

At this rate of restriction they might as well not even give us points and have the talent trees set up where you click your specialization then choose if you want it for pvp or pve. Then as you level you gain access to the deeper talents.

I miss having the choice to spec how i please even if its not the "Best highest output" spec

Another complaint , with all the people that play this game and all the servers that are linked through a battlegroup why the hell is there still 20+ minute bg Qs?

[Bombkirby]

Because this is far easier to balance. Game set aaaaand match!

I was going to go into detail with a big lengthy paragraph, but this is the conclusion I've come to in a nutshell.

[Caelia]

Another complaint , with all the people that play this game and all the servers that are linked through a battlegroup why the hell is there still 20+ minute bg Qs?

Because people roll their character on the faction where there's the most players.
If there's 100.000 players in a battlegroup (number pulled out of my ass) and 80.000 of them are Horde then the horde players will face long BG queues while alliance almost always have instant queues.
Just looking at my own realm we used to be pretty equally balanced with alliance/horde ratio, now it's more than 90% horde.

[Rotomon]

Because people roll their character on the faction where there's the most players.
If there's 100.000 players in a battlegroup (number pulled out of my ass) and 80.000 of them are Horde then the horde players will face long BG queues while alliance almost always have instant queues.
Just looking at my own realm we used to be pretty equally balanced with alliance/horde ratio, now it's more than 90% horde.

I agree but since you arent only pared with people from your own realm the chance of imbalance between horde and alliance is much less then when isolated to a server.

[Jademist]

After spending a couple days playing another game (wont say but im sure you know what one) i find my self Disgusted with World of Warcraft Talent Trees as is.

Why do they even give us points to spend in the talent trees when they restrict us so much currently.

You could put every character of the same spec side by side and right now id almost bet anything that they are identical within 1-5 points.

At this rate of restriction they might as well not even give us points and have the talent trees set up where you click your specialization then choose if you want it for pvp or pve. Then as you level you gain access to the deeper talents.

I miss having the choice to spec how i please even if its not the "Best highest output" spec

Another complaint , with all the people that play this game and all the servers that are linked through a battlegroup why the hell is there still 20+ minute bg Qs?

I'm sure that game-which-must-not-be-named has perfect balancing and no classes/combos will be uber OP than others.

[Gnull]

It's always going to be one thing or another. When they had the old, bigger talent trees, you still had most of the population that knew what they were doing (i.e., knew enough to look up builds on the web) using fairly cookie cutter builds for PVP or PVE.

Then, you had the noobs, who had no idea what they were doing, who built these horrible Frankenstein builds where they took four talents from each tree, and ended up with pallies that couldn't tank, couldn't heal, and couldn't DPS. Frankly, figuring out the synergies between all those talents and various class abilities was more than a new player could really manage. The smaller trees and 31-point restriction, combined with the level 10 features, means that it is much harder to end up with a broken, non-functional build where you have a Mut rogue using sinister strike and stacking talents that give you +crit to Ambush.

Finally, the old trees featured rubbish talents that no one ever wanted to take, but which you had to put points in in order to get lower on the tree, or which no one ever took at all who had an ounce of sense.

Most of the talents are at least semi-useful now (there are obviously exceptions), so that honestly I often enjoy getting a talent point when leveling much more than I used to.

Honestly, having 40+ talents in each tree that were each potentially useful would create a balancing nightmare (as happened in the old days, when people would find broken quasi-hybrid builds that Blizzard would have to squash in the next patch because they were never intended to see the light of day).

[Rotomon]

It's always going to be one thing or another. When they had the old, bigger talent trees, you still had most of the population that knew what they were doing (i.e., knew enough to look up builds on the web) using fairly cookie cutter builds for PVP or PVE.

Then, you had the noobs, who had no idea what they were doing, who built these horrible Frankenstein builds where they took four talents from each tree, and ended up with pallies that couldn't tank, couldn't heal, and couldn't DPS. Frankly, figuring out the synergies between all those talents and various class abilities was more than a new player could really manage. The smaller trees and 31-point restriction, combined with the level 10 features, means that it is much harder to end up with a broken, non-functional build where you have a Mut rogue using sinister strike and stacking talents that give you +crit to Ambush.

Finally, the old trees featured rubbish talents that no one ever wanted to take, but which you had to put points in in order to get lower on the tree, or which no one ever took at all who had an ounce of sense.

Most of the talents are at least semi-useful now (there are obviously exceptions), so that honestly I often enjoy getting a talent point when leveling much more than I used to.

Honestly, having 40+ talents in each tree that were each potentially useful would create a balancing nightmare (as happened in the old days, when people would find broken quasi-hybrid builds that Blizzard would have to squash in the next patch because they were never intended to see the light of day).

I agree but with the way the talent points are used now why even give you the option to place them seems frivolous tbh. I agree that as you level its much more enjoyable each point you get. Talent trees are much more streamlined now. So streamlined that its pointless to even fiddle with them.

---------- Post added 2011-02-17 at 11:35 PM ----------

I'm sure that game-which-must-not-be-named has perfect balancing and no classes/combos will be uber OP than others.

No game with multiple classes that have multiple specs will have perfect balancing.

[Negrido]

I miss having the choice to spec how i please even if its not the "Best highest output" spec

Why anyone would choose to be sub par is beyond me. I actually like doing things well.

[Deleted]

Why anyone would choose to be sub par is beyond me. I actually like doing things well.

I suppose it's because they like the playstyle? I don't know about you but whenever I play games like Borderlands, I pick class and spec based more on how much I'll enjoy it rather than how good it is. That said, WoW has a laughable amount of customization beyond picking your spec and your focus.

[Kouki]

I very much dislike why we can't go 5 into this 10 into that 20 into w/e.
We must pick 31 before we can be let off the rails.

[Naturae]

Why anyone would choose to be sub par is beyond me. I actually like doing things well.

I'm going to use Marksmanship tree as an example. You have to choose between a buff supplied by other classes easily, A silence/interrupt, aoe damage, or flat haste. You can't take all of these. Sometimes you need a couple of these and you can't obtain all of these without sacrificing something that might be important at any given moment. Before as MM you could have your interrupts AND your AOE damage and your Buff to the raid...now you can't. The tree is too limiting and you lose way too much dps trying to get all of these VERY USEFUL but somewhat situational abilities.

[Kouki]

My problem is when your leveling.

Say you take a warlock, between 10 and 15 you put some points into demonology so you have more stam.
But oh just by doing that your locked into demonology, you can't be anything else till level 70.

Having said that when the fudge is that stam talent being re-designed.

[Ynna]

The talent trees we have now make you better at what you want to be better at, end (most of the time) offer new ways of playing your character. Making them smaller was a good move, since they still have the same function and impact (make you better) but now it is just easier to pick the right talents.
In "game you will not name" the talents (I don't think they call it talents, but whatever) can be very bland, especially the lower tiers. And because of the way they set up their trees (you have three of them at the same time) it just gets even more confusing and harder to get a decent, viable specialization. New players (and the more casually inclined) will make the choices that they think are fun, which aren't necessary good choices from a gameplay perspective. The WoW talent trees, as they are now, offer choices that are all interesting (more or less). The point could be made that there isn't enough choice, I'll give you that. But with more options come more ways to pick a wrong combination.

[Negrido]

Zefie, I've lost count of how many times I've sung modern major general in inappropriate situations. I just felt the need to say that.

I'm going to use Marksmanship tree as an example.
The tree is too limiting and you lose way too much dps trying to get all of these VERY USEFUL but somewhat situational abilities.

Hurm, that does sound awkward. As though it shouldnt be that way.
As a warlock I actually have four or so worthless talent points, so maybe there is more to this idea than I first thought.

[kaloryth]

Saying that there's no diversity in specs is exaggerating... a lot. I play a resto druid, so that's what I know, but I could probably come up with in a couple minutes at least half a dozen different but COMPLETELY VIABLE specs for pve. Don't even get me started on pvp. Just because you have to spend all your points in one tree at first doesn't mean you can't get a variety of specs out of those 31 points.

I, however, do remember (not so fondly) when if you wanted to pvp as a resto druid at the beginning of wrath, you put more points in feral than you did in resto. X.x But I also remember (more fondly), the popularity of dreamstate druids in TBC. It's much easier this way to balance though, so I'm glad they made this change after I got over the initial shock.

[Kotomie]

For the majority of people who want to play their class optimally, this change makes sense. For the majority of people who want the people they play with to have specs that give them a chance to succeed, this make sense.

For the minority of people who want to "play the way they want", this is a tragedy.

[JustKidding]

People need to STFU about this...

Like seriously... the Trees are in a much better shape now more than ever!

Remember Vanilla WoW? When each class had two out of three useless Talent Trees?

[Deleted]

After spending a couple days playing another game (wont say but im sure you know what one) i find my self Disgusted with World of Warcraft Talent Trees as is.

I think that the "other game" devs mantra is "don't do to players what GC did to them"

[writerbythelake]

I totally agree. My new rogue toon on that *other game has some useful tank talents, some useful raid talents, some useful talents for the dynamic world stuff that goes on even if the world boss guy is way higher level, and is strong ranged and melee. It's really customizable and fun again. And creativity is allowed... nobody is going to inspect you in a dungeon and say "you're doing it wrong because you only have 2/3 in talent X". It's not so simple and not so cookie cutter as WoW.

[Mammoth]

Speaking as a prot warrior, I have lot of talents I can shuffle to match the changing situation. I am happy.