6 years of vanilla talent system vs 8 years of current talent system

[Augrelle]

oh look 5% crit
oh look 5% dodge
oh look 5% hit
oh look 5% ah who fucking gives a shit

they were BORING

they were boring, but I would still take boring over nothing.

The act of gaining something when leveling up feels a lot better than gaining nothing. Even if the talents were boring.

[ro9ue]

wow it's shocking the new talent system has been with us longer than the classic one... oh boy.

Still miss the old talent trees though, even if a 0.5% increase to something was nearly useless, at least it felt like you achieved something.

I would have no issue with the new talent system if there was actually MORE talents, even if it's cosmetic. Waiting every 15 levels just to get something doesn't feel as good as getting rewards every level. Maybe it's because leveling is faster now days and it could be overkill? Then why not every 3 levels or every 5?

The thing with Legion was it added that sense of old talent system vibe, but now thats taken away the journey from 100 - 120 is a lonely one. The new talent system also kind of ends at level 100. Thats 20 levels of nothing now. Blizzard need to go back and add two more rows of talents to make up for the void that was taken away.

I totally get why Blizzrd got rid of the talent trees. Can you iamgine if those talent trees were still with us. It would have been PAth of Exile level of bonker talent tree lol.

This is what they looked like last


Now imagine these trees 3 - 4 more expansions down the line lol. Then think of the Blizzard devs who would have to try and balance all that. So I totally get it.

Personally they should have kept the old talent trees and made the new one (at say level 100) and added the current new talent system for max level and beyond. Rather than just getting rid of it completely.

Yeah. I was also recently thinking about the Rift talent trees. Yes, the game overall is bad, but they had like a tree up top just like WoW, and as you commit more points into that specialization tree (ie Ret, Resto, etc), you unlocked more talents below. I think it would be cool to see those rows of talents below, and as you invest more into a specialization you can access more talents below. Maybe every ~10 points u can pick a talent - like the pool of honor talents.

Fundamentally, the old tree just feels appropriate in a single player game. If they want to make it less +X% dmg, thats fine. Give the talent points a more mechanical impact - possibly closer to the Heroes of the Storm talents.

See what I mean here:
https://rift.magelo.com/en/soultree#f/i/d

Except below instead of just unlocking the pathway, you either have talent tiers like now or a massive pool to draw from, like the honor talents.

[Deleted]

The old talents were so mind numblingy boring. You checked Elitist Jerks for what the best talent set up was, picked those talents, then never bothered to open that tab ever again..

At least now we have some variety in the talents, there are loads of changes that can be done, that affects gameplay.

[Volitar]

Yes I miss the old system. People act like the new system is amazing but now you have to choose things like AOE where as before they were just part of a the class's basic toolkit. I'm playing a DPS Warrior currently and the only talent I have ever had to change is double charge into Stormbolt. This is for both PVP and PVE. Not very much excitement there..

[The7]

I like the current system better, but I also miss the feeling of progression and dept that the old talent tree provided. I wish we could have the best of both worlds.

[Sundreamer]

vanilla = customising the entire class through the tree
current = customising only the spec it's self

it would be good if we could have a hybrid of the 2
we can pick what ever spells we want for our class lets say we have 100 spells/abilities we can only pick to use 20 of them but we can have any of them we want on our action bar

giving you the ability to spec like trash, does not make it any better or more interesting. trash is still trash. nonviable.

[Deleted]

giving you the ability to spec like trash, does not make it any better or more interesting. trash is still trash. nonviable.

lol

What is "customization" to you then? The talents we have today?

[Deleted]

People talk about cookie cutter like the current setup isn't completely cookie cutter either. Newsflash you can never have any set up that doesn't have cookie cutter.


Excluding the shift from S2M to LotV Shadow pretty much never swapped a single talent for the entirety of legion, old system was great and i've always hated this new crap, bUt MuH cOmPlExItY, NoT aS BoRInG, gimme a break you all still just copy whatever icy veins or someone from youtube tells you.

[Sundreamer]

lol

What is "customization" to you then? The talents we have today?

it's mostly the same as the cookie cutter builds, without the useless clutter. adding more trash to the pile does not turn it into your "customization"

[Deleted]

What may be considered to you "clutter" and "trash" may be the holy grail for others.

You may think all the survival talents for rogue are trash.
But they may be useful to others depending on the situation. (pvp or world content)

[Biske]

A lot of the old talent tree stuff that was cookie cutter for each spec is already baked into the class. For example, back in the day, the marksmanship tree had trueshot aura at the very end, so you'd have to go all the way down there for that talent, and almost every other talent to get to it was mandatory (like the increased range weapon damage and stuff like that), with only scattershot being optional, and the ones that weren't mandatory were "trap" talents (as in, useless, not talents to buff traps. That's in Survival, which was -the- useless tree with the useless melee talents, except for humanoid slaying and monster slaying), so on my MM hunter I feel like I have way more options now.

On my paladin, I have more options as well, BUT, depending on the spec, they're different ways of achieving the same goal. To explain: back in BC I think it was, I could be a "shockadin" and do alright damage with holy shock. It wasn't really meant for healing. It was more of a fringe, niche thing that was kind of neat, I guess, but outside of that I just stuck to my cookie cutter holy spec. Now there's different stuff I can do but it all boils down to "how do I want to heal?" rather than "I could to this weird dps holy spec if I feel like it".

All in all, though, I don't miss the old talent system. Outside of DKs (in wrath, since obviously they didn't exist in vanilla, but the trees were still a thing) and rogues, I never found hybrid builds to be terribly useful (and "hybrid" doesn't mean putting your leftover points into another tree. No one ever put all of their points into just one tree. That would be crazy dumb. Otherwise, every build ever would be considered hybrid. A hybrid meant not going deep enough to get that "core" talent, and instead picking up usually mid-tier talents from other trees). And with rogues it was because, regardless of spec, they just do the same thing, which is dps (this wasn't a thing that affected mages that much because talents forced you into specializing with one type of elemental damage).

[Worgoblin]

That's in Survival, which was -the- useless tree with the useless melee talents

Useless for what? I found survival talents extremely useful for my PvP needs.

[Malix Farwin]

Disagree entirely. Most players didn’t have perfect cookie cutter builds back then contrary to popular belief. And some classes had many options like rogue.

I would take the old system back in a heart beat. It made leveling up way more fun too. And I’m of the mind set that leveling should be a big part of the game that’s fun.

Did you play back in the day? Most people had cookie cutter builds and even those who didnt, did not change their talents that often because of the ramping gold penalty similar to how Azerite reset is but worse.

Just because some people were not using optimal talents did not mean they were not setting and forgetting.

- - - Updated - - -

What may be considered to you "clutter" and "trash" may be the holy grail for others.

You may think all the survival talents for rogue are trash.
But they may be useful to others depending on the situation. (pvp or world content)

Then it would just be cookie cutter pvp talents but you would have to instead pay gold just swap between a pvp or pve setup and click through a lot of bland "increase x dmg" or "increase x defense" talents.

[Deleted]

Useless for what? I found survival talents extremely useful for my PvP needs.

People dont understand what "customization" is.
Everytime someone makes this type of thread is always the same false comments.

1) Because they are PvE'ers and ofcourse there is always a cookie cutter build for instanced PvE
2) They never did PvP their entire lives
3) They never played the game for "fun" and only know how to be "optimal"
4) They never played around with customization

Its always the same in every thread.

edit: even a BLUE has already admited he never PvP'ed in his life when he said old talent trees were bad.
Incredible. Tell me i am wrong.

[Malix Farwin]

People dont understand what "customization" is.
Everytime someone makes this type of thread is always the same false comments.

1) Because they are PvE'ers and ofcourse there is always a cookie cutter build for instanced PvE
2) They never did PvP their entire lives
3) They never played the game for "fun" and only know how to be "optimal"
4) They never played around with customization

Its always the same in every thread.

edit: even a BLUE has already admited he never PvP'ed in his life when he said old talent trees were bad.
Incredible. Tell me i am wrong.

No you do not understand why they were bad, incredible and this point is further proven when people who say they were good use broad statements like customization without any further detailed information or even examples.

[Dinduffen]

why not both

[Deleted]

And every time someone makes this type of thread there are people thinking making your mace attacks ignore 3% more of the targets armour was "fun".

[Deleted]

No you do not understand why they were bad, incredible and this point is further proven when people who say they were good use broad statements like customization without any further detailed information or even examples.

But im tired of giving examples. If i post it again it may be considered spam at this point.
My first post on page 10 is one example of rogues in 5v5 in WotlK.
There were Tank warlocks at some point
Tank Boomkins
Shockadins
Endless choices in pvp talents for mages in WotlK
Endless choices in both pve and pvp for Deathknights when they were implemented

There have been so many hybrid specs in WotlK it was insane.

[Deleted]

Vanilla: "cool, I'v hit max level, time to alt tab and search for the ideal talent tree and god forbid I put one point elsewhere or some asshat is gonna inspect me and kick me from the raid for not having the most viable talents!

Current: "cool, I'v hit max level and now I can pick whichever play style I like, because all talent choices are mostly the same powerlevel and viable"




Current: "cool, I'v hit level 15, I can pick between 3 really interesting abilities"
Vanilla: "cool, I'v hit level 15, I can pick between sunder armor lasting one more second or reduce the rage cost of my thunder clap by staggering 1 rage."

[Luxeley]

I never loved the talent system introduced in MOP. I'd sign off on the Vanilla talent trees or even the Cata trees over the currect system. However, I think a happy medium can be found the best of all 3 talent trees. Less choices than Vanilla, a different kind of limitation than Cata and a lot more choice than the current system, but a few tiers where you choose one of three.