Do you miss the old Talent System?

[MasterHamster]

I miss spending a point every level.
I do not miss how bad the old system was in other ways. +2% damage on X spell, fill all these to reach that.
Or like in Cataclysm, fill these no-brain talents then you might end up with 2 or 3 points left to spend on whatever tier 1 talent you want.
People talking about the old systems "depth" and "options" doesn't seem to have given it much thought at all.

At max level the new system is way superior, but while leveling it is not. That's the one strength of the old system, you got one, perhaps tiny barely significant upgrade every time you leveled up, but it was YOU who chose it.

[Deleted]

I miss the old talents very very much.

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But you didn't really have different options, unless you wanted to play a gimped spec. That was the problem with the old talent system.

you did have alot of different options in most cases, that was the catch, by sometimes gimping yourself in one are you could be better in some other area etc, was super fun.

[Shadowbane]

Seriously, actually look back on these. They're not exciting or interesting at all. 90% of the fire tree is just % procs for other spells.

http://www.gamestool.net/tc/wow112/maget.php

I don't miss them at all. I hated having to invest talent points after hard leveling in +1% something. It felt like very, very slow gradual progression.

Oh boy, now I have a 2% chance on my fireball casts to stun them, just 4 more talent points for it to be useful! Finally, I hit level 40; now I can use Ice Block. Amazing. Anyone remember arcane armor? Increases armour by 50% / 100% of your intellect or something like that? I literally remember laughing at my friend once because he actually invested talent points in that.

There was a best spec for PvP and PvE for every class. Certain talents were absolutely necessary. Others were pretty pointless. It didn't offer the complex builds people seem to remember them for. The only thing complex about them was that there was so much room to go wrong. That's a good thing - if you're doing a raid encounter or high end pvp. But we're only talking about sorting out talents, something anyone ought to be able to do without having to worry about being laughed at for speccing into sword, dagger and mace specializations. Building a talent tree that doesn't suck shouldn't be end-game content where you have to look up a strategy guide on the internet, e.g EJ.

Nowadays when you go up against someone in PvP you have far less idea of what talents they might be using, which makes it a little more exciting than knowing every class / spec is going to be using the same abilities as was the case back with the old talent system - and some talents are better for some encounters than others in PvE. It's far easier to swap talents in and out depending on the situation.

The only thing bad about it really is that you only get one every 15 levels, so whilst leveling it can drag on for a while before it feels like you earn anything new and exciting to use. However, it's not like it takes ages to hit level cap anymore. You can get to 90 in a few days of leveling now.

[Aleksej89]

defo... I used to love messing with talents just because I could. cata wasn't too bad but now the talent system sucks balls, its far too generic boring as fukk.
but yea the old 71 point trees were mega fun to play round with. its whats wrong with wow the last 2 years. all dumbed down far too much so even a monkey smoking weed could play it.

Yea sure you could play around the trees for (pointless) fun, but as far as successfully/efficiently doing PvP/Raiding there were like 2 or 3 viable builds (depending on the class).
I recall my Enhancement and Elemental shaman PvE specs not changing a single talent point for an entire expansion - i had the "cookie cutter" build, the non-picked talents were awful, and as soon as my Shaman got max level i completely FORGOT talents existed.

It mostly depends on the class you played, but for a lot of PvE specs there was pretty much only ONE "correct" talent build that lasted the majority of the expansion - which made talents at max level literally non existent for a lot of players

[Deleted]

I do.

When I started playing, I remember going through the talent trees of every class to see what stuff they had, and it was really fun. I thought about my first class for a while before finally being able to make a decision.

I also miss hybrid specs, these were REALLY fun. They weren't viable at all, but still, I liked how you could mix stuff from two trees and play with it.

I sure miss my permanent ghoul while playing blood.

[Dispirit]

I do miss the old talent system...mostly because the new system SUCKS. they wanted to make it so people would customize their characters and instead they just created a tedious system where you respec to a new cookie cutter build on every single fight. everybody still uses the exact same specs.

[Etrigan]

Yeah sometimes... The old talent system was just much better to level with. Otherwise I rarely think about it.

[Tenjen]

Yeah, I'm missing it. With old system I was at least bothering about my talents. Turning talents into something like glyphs just removed them from game for me. Now only spec matters for me.

Actually the majority of people would go through entire patches and expansions not bothering with their talents. you set up a the cookie cutter build and forget it forever.

How are they removed from the game now? If you ignore yoru talents now for different situations you are hobbling your raid/pvp group by not adapting.

I do miss the old talent system...mostly because the new system SUCKS. they wanted to make it so people would customize their characters and instead they just created a tedious system where you respec to a new cookie cutter build on every single fight. everybody still uses the exact same specs.

Thats not cookie cutter...thats not cookie cutter AT ALL. Thats adapting by fight. Cookie cutter is ONE best talent setup and all others get you supremely gimped unless you are questing and doing the easier dungeons of the time. in which case its all irrelevant anyway. Not changing at all unless a patch came about, in which case you went to the new cookie cutter for the next half-dozen months.

[Kezotar]

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.

And how is it not different from todays? 99,99% of all the warriors I've met have the same talent tree as me. If something is different it's 1 point.

[Karny]

even though certain hybrid speccs were beyond stupidly overpowered, i liked it better then current ones.

TBC warlock:
pvp: specc SL/SL = win
pve: get hit cap, spec 0/21/40, make "mage tears fuel me" macro = win and lol

[Dispirit]

Actually the majority of people would go through entire patches and expansions not bothering with their talents. you set up a the cookie cutter build and forget it forever.

How are they removed from the game now? If you ignore yoru talents now for different situations you are hobbling your raid/pvp group by not adapting.



Thats not cookie cutter...thats not cookie cutter AT ALL. Thats adapting by fight. Cookie cutter is ONE best talent setup and all others get you supremely gimped unless you are questing and doing the easier dungeons of the time. in which case its all irrelevant anyway. Not changing at all unless a patch came about, in which case you went to the new cookie cutter for the next half-dozen months.

cookie cutter in the sense that everyone will be adapting to the fight in the exact same way. you're not a unique snowflake just because you and everyone else want to use diffuse magic against any opponent that does magic damage. it's just a nuisance.

[huth]

you did have alot of different options in most cases, that was the catch, by sometimes gimping yourself in one are you could be better in some other area etc, was super fun.

Except 95% of the time, you could only exchange some fairly irrelevant bonus for another fairly irrelevant one that was slightly weaker. Most of the builds were weak or unusable.

[Baine]

The only good about the old system is you were getting something each level. That's about it. I prefer much more the present talent tree choices.

[Syran]

Yes, the hybrids between specs were an interesting concept, while new talents feel like meaningless perks, more suited for a Call of Duty game, not for the progress of your RPG character.

[zoefschildpad]

In the old talent system I had max level characters that I never respecced on. Ever. Now at least there is some motivation to change things up every once in a while. Like mentioned before though, spending a point every level, even if it was the same thing 5 levels in a row, felt better.

I like the idea of the new talent system, but the talents are mostly nowhere near as fun or distinct as they could be. I mean a tier with 3 ways to improve charge? really? talents could have a much bigger impact. THey should give you a choices that dramatically change abilities in your toolset to be absolutely awesome. That charge tier should have a talent that adds damage to charge, stuns the targets and knocks back any enemy on your way to the target and deals damage to them too. The other two talents should have an equally significant buff to other abilities. So many tiers lack awesomeness right now...

[Thimagryn]

I agree with many sentiments that the old talent system was very much full of bloat. It's pretty much a fact that no one is really that enticed by a 1% boost to the crit chance of a specific spell, or reducing it's cooldown by .5%. I think what I take from the talent system is the spirit of customization and hybridization that no longer exists in WoW. The old system very much needed to be reworked, but I think it could still exist with some major modifications while removing the 'bloat' of stat boosters.

I've been playing games recently like Guild Wars 2, Torchlight 2 and Borderlands 2, and the Talent/Skill systems they have are really interesting. They're focused on enhancing spells to open new types of gameplay rather than boosting stats, and that's what I think the WoW talents needed to be more like. They could have reduced the whole Talent Tree, cut out all stat modifiers and kept in everything that changed spells/effects to create a wider variety of gameplay and combinations.

While it's arguable that people will gravitate to ideal builds and never change, it's inevitable in any game. What the old Talent system offers is opening up different styles of gameplay within your spec. A part of the reason is the hybridization you had with the other specs. We simply don't have this any more, and while it's much easier for Blizzard to define Spec-based gameplay and balance, it's lost a lot of it's 'Hey check out my build' charm. I think that's what I miss a lot from WoW, especially after playing many other games that have since built off their own system.

[Deleted]

Except 95% of the time, you could only exchange some fairly irrelevant bonus for another fairly irrelevant one that was slightly weaker. Most of the builds were weak or unusable.

^ yeah, that's how I basically remember it as well. I don't miss the old talent system at all, but would of course like to have the current one expanded even more at some point.