We should've gotten rework on talent tree talents.

[Caparino]

What does what you link prove exactly? Imagine my shock that people doing the hardest content in the game have to choose the very best talents

Mythic raiders make up a tiny portion of the playerbase, they should not be seen as the standard

Sorry Bennet but show me a Demonhunter with no First Blood or Demonic. Some Talents are always good, hell they are the epitome of the whole class and you must "Choose" them. DH hast one of the worst talent trees with VDH Soulbomb your whole Tankdmg baked in on talent and so on. To many talents are Filler with no real purpose.

[Jastall]

At the same time. This is an RPG. There needs to be meaningful character progression.

You know what else isn't sustainable? Constantly giving us rental powers and abilities, designing our Class around these rental systems and then completely stripping them away. Not even you can argue that. BfA has proven it.

Shadowlands also does nothing to address dead talent rows that have almost mandatory choices.

Everyone remember when Ion claimed he would baseline the talents that 90% of players were choosing and felt mandatory to take? Yeah I remember that lie too.



For those that need a reminder - World of Warcraft has now gone SIX YEARS without a single baseline ability or talent row being added.

Six. Fucking. Years.

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https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-stats/talents

Yeah, nah.

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Previously baseline abilities? THROW THEM IN THE TALENT TREE.

Abilities that are thematically part of the class, are incredibly cool and are also the best DPS choice is EVERY SCENARIO. IT'S A TALENT. DEAD ROW. (DEMONIC, HAVOC).

https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/pve-stats/talents

Barely any talents are changing for Shadowlands. It's actually hilarious.

The link is limited to players who have killed at least 1 Mythic boss- meaning it is not that representative and skews towards talents that are good in raids rather than PvP, open world or M+. Doesn't mean it is useless, but careful with that data. A good number of specs have 2, maybe 3 rows with an undisputed winner (90%+ pick rate), while the rest is more of a player preference or situational affair, especially utility talents.

The database is also outdated; if you're Arms, for instance, there are many situations where Cleave outpaces Warbreaker depending on your gear. Yet the link says it is somehow is taken by 5% of players only? Yeah, that is definitely not true.

Now I do agree dead talents should be buffed/redesigned more aggressively, but with 250 talents in the game, some of them will always fall by the wayside no matter how good your balancing team is.

[DemonDays]

I honestly don't get it. Did people not complain enough about classes in BfA? When are they planning to move away from this nonsensical design? Aren't two expansions enough to end this weird experiment?

The fanboys ate it up. The whole "unpruning" bullshit was hilarious to watch all the people applauding it.

Most of the things "returned" are useless flavour abilities or buttons you will never press for 2/3 of the specs because of the way they've designed the specs to be mini classes now.

There have been very little talent changes and very little changes to how specs fundamentally play.

Shadowlands is BfA class design but "slightly" better. Least amount of effort possible.

All the same talents are still mandatory.

[Swnem]

What they should have done is add a new talent row, not more borrowed powers.

[DemonDays]

The link is limited to players who have killed at least 1 Mythic boss- meaning it is not that representative and skews towards talents that are good in raids rather than PvP, open world or M+. Doesn't mean it is useless, but careful with that data. A good number of specs have 2, maybe 3 rows with an undisputed winner (90%+ pick rate), while the rest is more of a player preference or situational affair, especially utility talents.

The database is also outdated; if you're Arms, for instance, there are many situations where Cleave outpaces Warbreaker depending on your gear. Yet the link says it is somehow is taken by 5% of players only? Yeah, that is definitely not true.

Now I do agree dead talents should be buffed/redesigned more aggressively, but with 250 talents in the game, some of them will always fall by the wayside no matter how good your balancing team is.

The linked example is a means to an end.

I would wager if we had the data Blizzard has it would be even more skewed. Even worse.


We have gone an entire expansion cycle with almost zero(lol shadow, enhance, ele) changes to talents. Almost zero buffs or nerfs to under performing or over performing talents.


I mean. Is anyone going to try and argue that 99% of Havoc players are choosing Demonic on the last row when your other choices are the clunky Momentum and the god awful Nemesis.

Demonic thematically fits the "Class Fantasy", is extremely fun to use, looks flashy as fuck and is also the BEST DPS CHOICE by over 15%.

^There are several more examples like this. It's just bad design.

[Saltysquidoon]

Now I do agree dead talents should be buffed/redesigned more aggressively, but with 250 talents in the game, some of them will always fall by the wayside no matter how good your balancing team is.

At an absolute minimum in the past four years, every single talent should have had at least one use-case at some point, even if it whole a wholly artificial "taking turns" situation.

I would wager if we had the data Blizzard has it would be even more skewed. Even worse.

In the closest fight to patchwerk first blood and demonic are taken 100% of the time on heroic and mythic difficulty and never less than 99% of the time across all difficulties.

There is pretty much no good faith argument to be made that both of these talents shouldn't be baseline they're essentially integral to how the spec functions and have been for years.

[DemonDays]

What they should have done is add a new talent row, not more borrowed powers.

Covenant Utility Ability.
Covenent DPS/HPS Ability.
Soulbind Talent Tree.
Legendaries.

There are 4 rental ability/talent like systems being added in the FIRST PATCH.

Imagine what it's going to look like by the end of 9.3? Six rental systems? Seven?

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At an absolute minimum in the past four years, every single talent should have had at least one use-case at some point, even if it whole a wholly artificial "taking turns" situation.

It's almost been 5 years since we got the Legion gutting.

[Echeyakee]

For some classes talents are essentially "build a working class" puzzle, and in many cases you're still end up missing parts.

This picture was making round on shadow discord a few months back:

[Armourboy]

For some classes talents are essentially "build a working class" puzzle, and in many cases you're still end up missing parts.

This picture was making round on shadow discord a few months back:

And there in lies the problem. The basic car should be built without the talents, the talents should be like strapping on rocket boosters, a mega sound system, a rear shooting smoke screen, etc.

Talents shouldn't be making the spec function, it should be accenting those functions.

[Aigilas]

And there in lies the problem. The basic car should be built without the talents, the talents should be like strapping on rocket boosters, a mega sound system, a rear shooting smoke screen, etc.

Talents shouldn't be making the spec function, it should be accenting those functions.

10/10 exactly this

[DemonDays]

For some classes talents are essentially "build a working class" puzzle, and in many cases you're still end up missing parts.

This picture was making round on shadow discord a few months back:

We've been saying this since they gutted the Classes/Specs in Legion.

It became even more apparent in BfA when the Artifact and Legendaries weren't there anymore to plug the holes in the sinking ship.

We're now 5 years on from that point and NOTHING has changed.

Most talent trees are exactly the same as they were in BfA and you will choose the exact same talents on every row.

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In the closest fight to patchwerk first blood and demonic are taken 100% of the time on heroic and mythic difficulty and never less than 99% of the time across all difficulties.

There is pretty much no good faith argument to be made that both of these talents shouldn't be baseline they're essentially integral to how the spec functions and have been for years.

Unfortunately we're all just yelling into the void at this point.

Until Ion and his band of morons are 100% gone from the team nothing will change.

How many years of lies and empty promises does it take before even the pathetic fanboys start waking up?

Absolutely nothing has changed in Shadowlands. The "Great Unpruning" was smoke and mirrors.

[enigma77]

Aye class design (talents) is an abomination.

[Jastall]

The linked example is a means to an end.

I would wager if we had the data Blizzard has it would be even more skewed. Even worse.


We have gone an entire expansion cycle with almost zero(lol shadow, enhance, ele) changes to talents. Almost zero buffs or nerfs to under performing or over performing talents.


I mean. Is anyone going to try and argue that 99% of Havoc players are choosing Demonic on the last row when your other choices are the clunky Momentum and the god awful Nemesis.

Demonic thematically fits the "Class Fantasy", is extremely fun to use, looks flashy as fuck and is also the BEST DPS CHOICE by over 15%.

^There are several more examples like this. It's just bad design.

Demonic's definitely one of these talents that should be baseline, no arguments here, alongside First Blood. On the flipside, you can look at Resto Druid and no row has a clear winner. Arms is fairly well distributed, while Prot Warrior basically has one build period. To me it seems there's about one problem spec per class, but we won't know what talent rows are locked until the expansion releases, and truthfully neither does Blizzard considering the stupid amount of moving gears that affect the complex machine that is WoW's balance.

[stross01]

Few talent rows only have one choice, sure - talent rows like the fire mage flame on row exists, but that's the minority. For the most part every talent has its uses

Go look at prot warrior then repeat that.

6 of the 7 rows cannot be changed.

[Armourboy]

We've been saying this since they gutted the Classes/Specs in Legion.

It became even more apparent in BfA when the Artifact and Legendaries weren't there anymore to plug the holes in the sinking ship.

We're now 5 years on from that point and NOTHING has changed.

Most talent trees are exactly the same as they were in BfA and you will choose the exact same talents on every row.

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Unfortunately we're all just yelling into the void at this point.

Until Ion and his band of morons are 100% gone from the team nothing will change.

How many years of lies and empty promises does it take before even the pathetic fanboys start waking up?

Absolutely nothing has changed in Shadowlands. The "Great Unpruning" was smoke and mirrors.

Yeah I was excited at first look but the more I dig into the more I realize class wise nothing really changed. The major change is your good stuff will come from a rep grind rather than from random drops.

It's still borrowed power, except this time you are limited because you can only get it from a Rep and you better hope you pick the right one.

[Soon-TM]

<hilarious pic snipped>

Man, that's EXACTLY what is happening with shadow atm. Even if you could pick all three talents across all seven rows, you'd have a barely working spec. What you have now is simply broken !@#$, that was artificially propped in 8.1 and 8.2 by an obscene numbers buff.

[OFiveNine]

Revert to MOP = classes fixed

[kaminaris]

Revert to MOP = classes fixed

Classes fucked beyond repair.

About topic, yes talents are badly designed. Demo lock while being the best designed spec in entire history of wow doesn't function without Demonic consumption.
Which is pants on head retarded (the talent). Whole mechanic on this talent is damn retarded.

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There are certainly talent rows that have only one real choice regardless of the level you play at, but to say that's the majority isn't true

Well to be honest it's about half of them. Talents do need a rework to provide at least some choice, and I am not even talking about dps wise.

[Super Kami Dende]

I do personally hate talent tiers where you actually only have one and only one relevant choice. Why can't all the talents be worth picking at least at some point. Many of them are just trash and no reason to use.

Is there really only one choice? or do you just look at other Peoples logs and assume you have to take that choice because "DA ELITES ARE DOING IT!"

Because I swap between Talents constantly on all my characters to swap up gameplay fairly often.


The irony of people complaining about "current" talent trees being too cookie cutter is the fact that the original trees were even more cookie cutter/boring.

Old Talent Trees gave you specific talents you basically needed to pick up at every 10 point threshold and then just % damage increases for most others. Your biggest choice in old trees was spending maybe a few points on a slightly more defensive build at the cost of a bit of damage.

[Tyris Flare]

Well, the unfortunate answer is probably just development resources. Box selling features like Covenants just seem like they will inevitably get more attention than "boring" class tweaks and fixes, even though the latter are far more important.