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  1. #81
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    "Not wanting" is probably putting it rather friendly, rather that they feared lots of balance and design issues going forward.

    It's probably about as doable as classic servers before they announced them in 2017... doable yes, but not without massive issues on Blizzards end and possible downsides for the players themselves.



    Personally i think the bigger problem is that Blizzard dropped the ball on talent design.
    Especially if they just decide to turn previous baseline abilities into talents, that's just bad design.

    That aside, i think the MoP talent design still offers more options as far as playstyle is concerned, depending on the class / spec.
    Funny thing is, that I believe if they would scale down their talent trees to, let's say to TBC levels, they would be easily(in a sense) manageable and yet provide more options to player. Instead ever growing talent tree, which was, of course, not manageable, they could create new smaller systems..like glyphs. I honestly believe they had great ides. In Cata, AFAIK, they kept number of talents same, just gave less talent points - this could help with ever growing level cap but not increasing complexity of talent tree and systems like glyphs would provide new customization options for players in newer expansions.

    Hell, I can actually see both old talent trees and current talents work in tandem. Maybe it would be too much...but honestly I doubt that.

    And well, I guess current talent system provide some customization, but here are problems I have with this system - it may change my rotation, but they never really changed my game plan for that class, I never felt it has some great impact on my character. Second problem - you can change talents anytime - so what specialization? At this point I think it could be actually better to have all talents active at a same time, my bars are half-empty anyway now, so there are more buttons to press..maybe give these abilities shared cooldowns or something..I just don't see a point of talents, If I can change them between pulls.

  2. #82
    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    How wanting both pve and pvp talents working all the time is removing the choice?
    Having access to everything isn't choice. That's just.. Having your cake and eating it too.

    The decision of "Will this talent help me kill this boss" vs "Will this talent help me survive this player" is more fun to me.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Trumpcat View Post
    What rainbow flag guy said.

    Also the only problem I currently have with talents is that the rows or options haven't increased in a while and while we did have a bunch of new "talents" in Legion via the artifacts and legendaries we lost them and the passive azerite bonuses fail to deliver the enrichment and variety the classes desperately need.

    Otherwise looking forward to people comparing the old talent trees with the current talent rows when both are live.
    It's something to compare. I actually prefer if there was a mix of both. Big talents that have more impactful effects on gameplay, and smaller talents that have incremental character progression.

    Also, 100% agree with you on missing a 110/120 talent row.

  3. #83
    Quote Originally Posted by Icechaosss View Post
    Having access to everything isn't choice. That's just.. Having your cake and eating it too.

    The decision of "Will this talent help me kill this boss" vs "Will this talent help me survive this player" is more fun to me.
    I think you are comparing apples and oranges here. At least how I understand it, he is not asking to "not have any choices", he just don't want part of his class to be behind pvp content and I agree, that's feel really stupid.

  4. #84
    Quote Originally Posted by Lythelia View Post
    It was in niche ways, they just had limited uses and weren't common. Doesn't mean they didn't exist or weren't worthwhile when applied right.
    For Shaman?
    Absolutely not, as explained earlier, the talent variation was miniscule in its impact and even worthless if someone else already chosen it.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lythelia View Post
    Correct, but your claim that you could do your role effectively in vanilla with just the right gear isn't right. They were extremely dependent on those talents in vanilla. Not that gearing made much sense in vanilla to start.
    You're dancing around the point.
    I've made my case here, i'd be just repeating myself from now on.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lythelia View Post
    Right, but the classes were built so that you would get your core kit just through leveling and buying ranks. From there you decided how you wanted to modify your class with talents. The problem there is that you were getting the base tool kit for your entire class (base toolkits for all three specs) and then you would pick your specialization, and within that spec you would get the toolkit to enable that play-style.
    Yeah, i've had so much ability based character customization...

    Let's say i am an Elemental Shaman (You're free to insert Balance, Ret or any other hybrid spec).
    I get Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst and Flame shock as my core baseline abilities.

    Now i want more, because having essentially just three buttons to deal is a little low.

    The old Talent system essentially gave me the middle finger.
    Nowadays, i can add stuff like Elemental Blast or Icefury (which turns Frost shock into a core ability) into my core set, which is good.

    Under the old talentsystem, Blizzard gave quite a lot of specs only one proper way to play the spec, if you didn't like that, you were out of luck.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lythelia View Post
    Raiding isn't the only content in the game.
    You know, the funny thing, BfA is probably the expansion with the most content outside of raiding.
    Problem is, that (at least in my opinion) most of this type of content is not very good.

    Like, compare BfA to Wotlk, how many ways did you have to gear yourself until you hit a dead end?
    In BfA, you can get to 400 without even touching raiding at all, reaching 25man Normal Ilvl without Raiding was impossible.

    Point is, the WoW devs seriously struggle with building decent MMO content outside of raiding, whether that is their fault or simply how WoW went is another discussion.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lythelia View Post
    Yeah, and the funny thing is, they're still doing as much tuning each patch and expansion as they were before talents left.
    And that is a bad thing?

    Those things aren't meant to be in stone, some things change to give it a different vibe.

    Second, you don't know much tinkering they would have to do if they had left the system in there.
    I mean, we already were had at "talent tree light" system during Cata, they still decided to ditch that with MoP.

    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    Funny thing is, that I believe if they would scale down their talent trees to, let's say to TBC levels, they would be easily(in a sense) manageable and yet provide more options to player.
    The big problem is that a lot of specs already have custom made resources for them that doesn't necessarily translate to other specs.

    Take for example Festering Wound from Unholy DK, should that be a random Dot, utterly unuseable for Frost? Should it be deep down in Unholy?

    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    I never felt it has some great impact on my character.
    I think its more of talent design problem than a system wide problem.

    In my opinion, the current talent system really lacks 1-2 big talents that change your spec drastically.
    In WoD, Demo Warlock had Demon Bolt, which basically made your entire rotation governed by this talent, it really had impact how you played.

    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    Second problem - you can change talents anytime - so what specialization? At this point I think it could be actually better to have all talents active at a same time, my bars are half-empty anyway now, so there are more buttons to press..maybe give these abilities shared cooldowns or something..I just don't see a point of talents, If I can change them between pulls.
    That's been a thing since Dual spec, to be honest, it was just expanded.
    Last edited by Kralljin; 2019-05-27 at 12:00 AM.

  5. #85
    Cata talent system was great. In fact the best we have had. We should get it back. But since we are not gonna have them back, at least they could add like 10 extra rows of talents so that we get to choose something more often than every 15 levels lol.

  6. #86
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    For Shaman?
    Absolutely not, as explained earlier, the talent variation was miniscule in its impact and even worthless if someone else already chosen it.
    So, you acknowledge they exist you just don't think there's a point to them? That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. Just like there's nothing wrong with them existing.


    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    You're dancing around the point.
    I've made my case here, i'd be just repeating myself from now on.
    I mean, I've directly pointed to what we're talking about. I don't know how else to say it.


    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Yeah, i've had so much ability based character customization...
    As much that exists in today's game.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Let's say i am an Elemental Shaman (You're free to insert Balance, Ret or any other hybrid spec).
    I get Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst and Flame shock as my core baseline abilities.

    Now i want more, because having essentially just three buttons to deal is a little low.

    The old Talent system essentially gave me the middle finger.
    Nowadays, i can add stuff like Elemental Blast or Icefury (which turns Frost shock into a core ability) into my core set, which is good.
    What you're doing is essentially pointing to a talent that only recently came into existence and saying that because the ability didn't exist back in vanilla it means the trees sucks. The old talent system also gave unique abilities as you went deep into the tree. You just nodded to that in your previous response to me talking about things like Hotstreak.

    Don't get me wrong, Icy Fury is cool (pun intended), but you can't tell me that couldn't easily be a talent in a tree. Just like Titan's Grip, one of the most iconic class abilities in the game today and it was a talent in Wrath.
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Under the old talentsystem, Blizzard gave quite a lot of specs only one proper way to play the spec, if you didn't like that, you were out of luck.
    Kind of, I mean, that's exactly how it is today except they give you one or two small ways you might be able to change your game-play. On the other hand, even if Blizzard did try to shoe-horn you into a spot you could still get crafty with your trees and do something different. Sure, it wasn't ideal and it would have problems but it's far more flexible than what we have today.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    You know, the funny thing, BfA is probably the expansion with the most content outside of raiding.
    Problem is, that (at least in my opinion) most of this type of content is not very good.
    Eh, I'd argue Legion. Suramar, Class hall campaigns, rifts, and everything circling around the artifact weapons (skins, AP, tints), mage tower, Light's Heart campaign. The big thing BfA really has going for it is WM and that new WM zone battle feature coming, but I'd agree, outside of PvP and M+ there isn't much.
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Like, compare BfA to Wotlk, how many ways did you have to gear yourself until you hit a dead end?
    In BfA, you can get to 400 without even touching raiding at all, reaching 25man Normal Ilvl without Raiding was impossible.
    You're right, absolutely true. This isn't a good thing either. There's quite a lot of discussion about the ramifications of this too. Nothing I care to get into today. On point though, gearing paths aren't particularly relevant to this conversation unless the gear itself does something like the lego rings in Legion did where they gave you an extra talent.
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Point is, the WoW devs seriously struggle with building decent MMO content outside of raiding, whether that is their fault or simply how WoW went is another discussion.
    You're absolutely right here. The open world content is just... rough. I feel like they've hit a good stride with raiding, PvP (mostly), and M+. Everything else just falls flat save the few times they do something that ends up being the exception. (Legion pre-patch invasions, elemental invasions, scourage invasions... mostly just invasions haha)


    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    And that is a bad thing?

    Those things aren't meant to be in stone, some things change to give it a different vibe.
    No, but the argument being given that they (the talent trees) take too much work seems to fall flat.
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Second, you don't know much tinkering they would have to do if they had left the system in there.
    I mean, we already were had at "talent tree light" system during Cata, they still decided to ditch that with MoP.
    No one does, they also rebuilt almost all the classes from the ground up again come Legion. Did it again with a few specs in BfA. You could argue they had to rebuild the specs for the "talent tree light" system for Cata, and had to do it again when they did migrate to MoP. Would it have been more work to rebuild all the classes that many times or to just keep working with the trees? No one has a clue.

  7. #87
    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    Maybe you would have a point, if they would not gut classes of their core skills. You have Shamans without totems, Hunters without traps and melee skills, Mages without frost spells, warlocks without curses.. but hey, you can choose between 3 different AoE skills..bravo..also, you can change them on the fly - such customization, much wow.

    No seriously, new system doesn't provide what the old one. They even said that in their post "Old system is too complex, we can hardly handle that". If you enjoy current system, more power to you, but it's not even close to old system.
    That has nothing to do with the current talent system. Classes had all thoes in MoP. If you can't stick to the point don't bother.

  8. #88
    No one should be in favor of the current talent system. The old talents gave players in-depth customization and gave them a sense a progression with every level. Most importantly... It made WoW feel like a true RPG. Most RPGs have some sort of talent system or skill tree. Blizzard reasons for changing the talent tree still make no sense to this very day.

  9. #89
    Quote Originally Posted by Icechaosss View Post
    This, I disagree with. I, personally, want choices. I want to make decisions.

    I feel like what you're describing is something you'd see in Guild Wars, since your kit is available most of the time to always switch.
    I never said anything about taking away choices or decisions.

    I do not want abilities that are Only used for pve or pvp.

  10. #90
    Old talent trees "worked" only because people were clueless. Will not ever work anymore in modern wow.

    Why? The answer is simple, as long as performance can be measured there is no room for a choice. Obviously having 2 different spells that does essentially the same doesn't really count as "choice".

    For example:
    Burst1: Deal 100k damage to one enemy, CD 1 minute
    Burst2: Deal 200k damage to one enemy, CD 2 min

    Even in this case you will simply prefer this one that aligns with your other cooldows.

    Even current implementation of talents has some dead choices:
    • Active that is behind or equal to passive abilities.
    • Awkward spells
    • RNG vs On use ability with roughly the same performance

    What could work is talent trees for utility. Because it is not really "measurable".
    For example having 40 points to spend on:

    • Movement speed increase
    • Damage reduction increase
    • Leech
    • Avoidance
    • CD reduction on interrupts
    • CD reduction on stuns
    • CD reduction on movement abilities
    • Having more charges of some ulility abilities
    • Bonus effect on utility spells (like adding self dispel on defensive cooldown)
    • Active crowd control abilities
    and so on. This could actually work.

    Need more stuns? put points in CD reduction on stuns, need more movement speed? Put more in movement speed. Stationary fight? Put more in damage reduction. There would be a lot of choices here.


    But talents for offensive? Lets leave it as it is. Barely works in current state, would be a catastrophe if ever reverted back to "trees".

  11. #91
    Quote Originally Posted by kaminaris View Post
    Old talent trees "worked" only because people were clueless. Will not ever work anymore in modern wow.

    Why? The answer is simple, as long as performance can be measured there is no room for a choice. Obviously having 2 different spells that does essentially the same doesn't really count as "choice".

    For example:
    Burst1: Deal 100k damage to one enemy, CD 1 minute
    Burst2: Deal 200k damage to one enemy, CD 2 min

    Even in this case you will simply prefer this one that aligns with your other cooldows.

    Even current implementation of talents has some dead choices:
    • Active that is behind or equal to passive abilities.
    • Awkward spells
    • RNG vs On use ability with roughly the same performance

    What could work is talent trees for utility. Because it is not really "measurable".
    For example having 40 points to spend on:

    • Movement speed increase
    • Damage reduction increase
    • Leech
    • Avoidance
    • CD reduction on interrupts
    • CD reduction on stuns
    • CD reduction on movement abilities
    • Having more charges of some ulility abilities
    • Bonus effect on utility spells (like adding self dispel on defensive cooldown)
    • Active crowd control abilities
    and so on. This could actually work.

    Need more stuns? put points in CD reduction on stuns, need more movement speed? Put more in movement speed. Stationary fight? Put more in damage reduction. There would be a lot of choices here.


    But talents for offensive? Lets leave it as it is. Barely works in current state, would be a catastrophe if ever reverted back to "trees".
    I like you post very much.

    I dont understand why Blizzard dont just remove talents alltogether...because TBH...there is no difference from removing all talents at this point (and add all talents to the spellbook of the spec)

    Seriously.
    Tell me what is the difference? We are literally all playing the "meta" Blizzard created for us. We are all using cookie cutter builds.

    Make all talents base abilities that come with the class AND implemetnt YOUR IDEA of only having "utility" talent trees.

    Someone has any argument against this? There is literally no difference.
    We are all as cookie cutter as ever before. Its all the same.
    Last edited by Roanda; 2019-05-27 at 08:26 AM.

  12. #92
    Quote Originally Posted by kaminaris View Post

    Need more stuns? put points in CD reduction on stuns, need more movement speed? Put more in movement speed. Stationary fight? Put more in damage reduction. There would be a lot of choices here.


    But talents for offensive? Lets leave it as it is. Barely works in current state, would be a catastrophe if ever reverted back to "trees".
    I get where you're coming from. Your suggestion could actually be a good compromise between the old and new talents.

    But my main problem with the talents nowadays and with talents that only work for utility is character customization.

    Imo the customization aspect of characters and their classes was a lot better than it's now.
    Even though there could've been more.

    What a lot of people seem to forget, is that WoW is still supposed to be a roleplaying game.
    And character customization should play a bigger role, even with offensive abilities.

    Right now we way more visual customization in comparison to vanilla, but a lot less in terms of abilities.

    I really would love to have both.
    But sadly it will always stay wishful thinking since the gaming landscape and community has changed away to be more progress oriented.

  13. #93
    @kaminaris What do you think about this?

    ATTEMPT 1 AT BRINGING BACK TALENT TREES

    1) Blizzard creates a template for all classes (all talents of nowadays would be put on the spell book and come with the classes spec)
    2) Bring Talent Trees back but only with utility...and 1 damage option (just to spice things up) at the end
    3) The damage talent would be something minimal (5%) and is only to spice things up a bit

    Example of the idea:


  14. #94
    Quote Originally Posted by Aggrophobic View Post
    That has nothing to do with the current talent system. Classes had all thoes in MoP. If you can't stick to the point don't bother.
    Of course it does. They removed options from classes and put them back as talents.. Shaman in TBC or WotLK was more complex without talents than current shamans with talents.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    That's been a thing since Dual spec, to be honest, it was just expanded.
    While I wasn't big fan of dual spec either, at least, you couldn't just fine-tune your build on the fly. I think their current approach for talents did the same thing like their skill system in Diablo 3 - there are no builds, just CoD style loadouts.

  15. #95
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Which is kind of stupid due the Vanilla system being rather punishing regarding respecing.
    I agree that was pretty dumb and made no sense. They were just looking for gold-sinks.

    One of my biggest gripes with this entire argument and those talents in particular - Talents you would never take if someone else would bring them, that combined with the fact that respeccing is a big investment is just not a great design.
    I also agree, to an extent. Like in a raid setting in TBC, where there's two Warlocks...if one Warlock spec'd in Malediction (+3% curse of elements damage bonus) that was all you needed. But if it's not a raid element you're going for, I find they're a lot more forgiving / open to customization which is my argument.



    If those bonuses had actually a massive impact, that might've been an argument, but those bonuses aren't.

    These bonuses are barely noticeable unless you apply them in a setting where actually a lot of people (meaning raids) will benefit from it and you're actually doing content where this bonus might make a difference (again, raids).
    If i had gained Windfury, that might be a different story, but all got was a flat bonus on the extra AP of the Bonus hit triggered by WF - that was not a lot.
    I disagree here though.

    Grace of Air Totem in Vanilla gave 77 Agility. With the Enhancing Totems talent that was brought up to 88 Agility. That's adding almost another 1% crit chance to your melee characters (not Rogues or Hunters) and increasing your tank's avoidance.

    It would definitely be a benefit over another Shaman healer who chose not to take that talent.

    Little nuances like that are why the old talent system was great because two healers of the same class and spec could bring different things to the table.



    Your playstyle is still very much same, it's not that you get new abilities to play around with or anything, you just pick up some different passives, or improve some abilities by a slight marigin.
    I disagree, because in Classic if you were a Mage going Fire/Frost or Frost/Arcane, or 100% Fire, or 100% Frost, etc. Your playstyle was changed quite differently.

    And if i compare this to current talent system, where i can gain actual abilities with their own niches and augment my playstyle to some extent, that is really a difference.
    To me, it was a revelation to have access to this loads of different abilities once MoP launched - something that i never really had under the old talent system.
    Except when you choose your spec in the current talent system that's it. You only get the abilities Blizzard says you should have. All the passives are baked in and you cannot customize your character. You get all the things you need for your rotation and anything else is superficial in the grand scheme because they don't really matter. I don't see that as a positive difference.



    This entire argument of "customization" usually falls through the floor based on at least one of three points:
    -Did not exist for every Class / spec
    -Did exist only due special circumstances that were changed / removed
    -Did not seriously change the playstyle
    I disagree with all of that, but I don't think we're going to come to a consensus here. =/

  16. #96
    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    Of course it does. They removed options from classes and put them back as talents.. Shaman in TBC or WotLK was more complex without talents than current shamans with talents.
    Classes were more complex in MoP yet they used the same talent system.

  17. #97
    Quote Originally Posted by Aggrophobic View Post
    Classes were more complex in MoP yet they used the same talent system.
    I really can't agree with you here.

    But I believe customization were pretty much lost in WotLK and Cata, because old talent system just couldn't work with such huge trees. While i still believe, it was better compared to current system, you was already forced to play "spec" and not "class" and new talent system was just natural evolution of the existing system. I understand why they moved away from old system in cata, it make sense honestly, I am just sad, they allowed old talent system to get into this point, where it doesn't provide much options anyway.

  18. #98
    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    I really can't agree with you here.

    But I believe customization were pretty much lost in WotLK and Cata, because old talent system just couldn't work with such huge trees. While i still believe, it was better compared to current system, you was already forced to play "spec" and not "class" and new talent system was just natural evolution of the existing system. I understand why they moved away from old system in cata, it make sense honestly, I am just sad, they allowed old talent system to get into this point, where it doesn't provide much options anyway.
    But you are wrong and you just did not have (and still do not) enough knowledge to use the system right.

  19. #99
    Quote Originally Posted by Aggrophobic View Post
    But you are wrong and you just did not have (and still do not) enough knowledge to use the system right.
    You are saying current system provide more options and classes are more complex today. Sorry buddy, I am not wrong. You just don't understand that issue.

  20. #100
    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    You are saying current system provide more options and classes are more complex today. Sorry buddy, I am not wrong. You just don't understand that issue.
    It removes the mandatory ones as they were not really options. It gives you more actual choices instead of illusions of choice. This is no debate and what you belive matters littel.

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