Proof that old Talents promoted more originality from players

[Infinity Cubed]

You are free to use whatever build you want when doing your own thing. But you continue to delude yourself thinking the people forming the raids and rbgs are going to accept your builds. Just like in Wrath, there will be the numerically superior build and if you don’t use it you won’t get in. Gear Score was a thing. Inspection of talents, gems, and enchants was a thing. Will be again.

You know, you just found the actual disconnect in the thread.

The people who can only play on the mercy of others (ie, random pug raids, mythics, and rated battlegrounds) are the ones that "need" to min/max just to be accepted.

The people who want more diverse options so they can have, you know, actual fun playing a video game don't give a single, solitary fuck about random pug raids, mythics, and rated battlegrounds or the people who can only "play' that way.

But like a good Republican in modern day America, only YOU and what YOU want matters. Fuck choices for anyone else. God fucking knows it will have zero impact on you as you have to run to the web to find out what someone else tells you you need to pick in order to play the game (all the while demonstrating that you know fuck-all about it yourself). There must be no choice! Only what you and you alone want matters!

Fuck that.

[roldy27]

Hmm, you couldn't inspect talents back then could you?

You couldn't in vanilla, ever since tbc if I recall correctly you could inspect talents.

[Funkyjunky]

Hmm, you couldn't inspect talents back then could you?

It was added in 2.3 - The Zul'aman patch.

[Echo of Soul]

Yes there were mods and addons that enabled you to do so. I remember being kicked more than once because of my build.

Yes but you had to have that addon installed so it was something you had to opt in to which is a better system imo.

[Funkyjunky]

I never said it wouldn't. I said it was less important to be there, especially with adds, than it would be for a Rogue focused on their Backstab ability. Because their talents affect their actual playstyle.

Unless you are expertise capped and there is no cleave mechanic it's important. Wiping the raid because you don't understand parry-haste mechanics is a no go.

[Theangryone]

You know, you just found the actual disconnect in the thread.

The people who can only play on the mercy of others (ie, random pug raids, mythics, and rated battlegrounds) are the ones that "need" to min/max just to be accepted.

The people who want more diverse options so they can have, you know, actual fun playing a video game don't give a single, solitary fuck about random pug raids, mythics, and rated battlegrounds or the people who can only "play' that way.

But like a good Republican in modern day America, only YOU and what YOU want matters. Fuck choices for anyone else. God fucking knows it will have zero impact on you as you have to run to the web to find out what someone else tells you you need to pick in order to play the game (all the while demonstrating that you know fuck-all about it yourself). There must be no choice! Only what you and you alone want matters!

Fuck that.

I don’t know why you are all bent or attacking me, I’m just telling you how it is. The playerbase gate keeps. RiO is the newest iteration of what has gone on in the game forever. I can tell you from experience that I was kicked from groups in Wrath for running supposed sub optimal builds. It will happen again.

[Hitei]

You know, you just found the actual disconnect in the thread.

The people who can only play on the mercy of others (ie, random pug raids, mythics, and rated battlegrounds) are the ones that "need" to min/max just to be accepted.

The people who want more diverse options so they can have, you know, actual fun playing a video game don't give a single, solitary fuck about random pug raids, mythics, and rated battlegrounds or the people who can only "play' that way.

But like a good Republican in modern day America, only YOU and what YOU want matters. Fuck choices for anyone else. God fucking knows it will have zero impact on you as you have to run to the web to find out what someone else tells you you need to pick in order to play the game (all the while demonstrating that you know fuck-all about it yourself). There must be no choice! Only what you and you alone want matters!

Fuck that.

But... you're the one saying "fuck other people and how I make their dungeons/pvp harder, only what I want matters".

[Zantos]

The biggest issue was most of those were very niche and were only good in very specific situations. Maybe 1 boss fight here or there. None of them were really used in any serious raids. I remember ranged holy paladins for a bit, but they were only used to deal damage to the flying blood queen and were useless everywhere else.

The reason they got rid of those talent, well the one they quoted a lot, was that they were nothing but cookie cutter builds. You'd look up a talent tree and copy it. Maybe making a few choices here or there for a bit more crit or haste. I always found that funny since that cookie cutter mindset has continued in every iteration of talents and glyphs since.

So while it could have promoted some originality, it typically wasn't viable or good. Just "oh, thats interesting. Now go get back into regular talents for raid"

[Infinity Cubed]

Unless you are expertise capped and there is no cleave mechanic it's important. Wiping the raid because you don't understand parry-haste mechanics is a no go.

Never fails to amaze me how people can't read on forums like these.

I don’t know why you are all bent or attacking me, I’m just telling you how it is. The playerbase gate keeps. RiO is the newest iteration of what has gone on in the game forever. I can tell you from experience that I was kicked from groups in Wrath for running supposed sub optimal builds. It will happen again.

Some of the playerbase. The small portion of the playerbase everyone else avoids as much as humanly possible. The small portion of the playerbase that ruins the game for everyone else. The small portion of the playerbase that are the only elitist scumbags screaming their bloody heads off about the mere mention of old-style talent trees returning.

No one gives a fuck about them or their worthless opinions. They're just an obnoxiously vocal minority who can't shut up to save their lives.

"I looked up stuff online, ergo, I am a masterful player who knows how to play. Because I had to look up a guide to tell me how to play properly, because I'm that shitty at the game. No, I am a master player of the game. I shall continue telling myself this. And it shall be true. Amen."

- - - Updated - - -

But... you're the one saying "fuck other people and how I make their dungeons/pvp harder, only what I want matters".

No, I'm not.

I'm saying "bring on more options and choices. You can still make your 'I copied this!' builds. Bully for you, you shitty player."

You're the clowns saying "NO! Fewer talents! No one makes choices anyway! Only the way I like to play matters! Fuck everyone else! Stop all other choices! Whaaa!"

Huge difference. But given the type of player you apparently are, I'm not surprised in the inability to understand it.

[Hitei]

No, I'm not.

I'm saying "bring on more options and choices. You can still make your 'I copied this!' builds. Bully for you, you shitty player."

You're the clowns saying "NO! Fewer talents! No one makes choices anyway! Only the way I like to play matters! Fuck everyone else! Stop all other choices! Whaaa!"

Huge difference.

The person you were replying to literally said "you are free to use whatever build you want". No one in this conversation is advocating for fewer options and choices, what an absolutely retarded strawman. People are just pointing out to you that your wacky builds effect other players and groups, so groups are not going to want you if your priority is a wacky build and not doing your role well.

But given the type of player you apparently are, I'm not surprised in the inability to understand it

You have no idea what sort of player I am. But given the other things you've posted, I'm not surprised you are unable to engage in a discussion without shitty fallacies. I personally don't care what build people are in the group I'm in, even if it's suboptimal and it becomes a circumstance of carrying people. I just also understand that there are people who (understandably) get annoyed when they are being forced to carry someone else through content because that person wants to deliberately hamper their capability in group content.

[RobertMugabe]

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BbgROZ9STY

Video features crazy player created specs from Wrath era:

-Honor Among Thieves Rogue
-AoE Fan of Knives interrupt and silence Rogue (pvp)
-Spell Power Enhancement Shaman
-Prot Holy Paladin (converting stamina into spell power...later changed to strength into spell power)
-Preg Pala (Prot Holy Ret Paladin)
-Necromancer caster ranged Deathknight (pvp)
-Dancing rune blood DK DPS (pre nerf)
-Arms Prot Tank Warrior
-Frostfire Mage

And there were many more player created inventions in specs some of which had to be nerfed.

I mean this video pretty much highlights specs that were bugged or super situational. And the rest wasn't much different gameplay-wise than what a "normal" spec would've looked like.

It's true though that wrath had the most playable specs and this was the peak of the old talent tree. But it was also very clear back then that this system wouldn't work long term. Many many talents were very unoriginal and many classes would have a lot of the same type of talent across all 3 specs.

[Infinity Cubed]

The person you were replying to literally said "you are free to use whatever build you want". No one in this conversation is advocating for fewer options and choices, what an absolutely retarded strawman.

You are so incredibly wrong it hurts. People are absolutely fucking livid at the idea, with multiple people saying they'd rather have no talents at all.

But excellent job on demonstrating a fundamental ability to not be able to read a conversation.

- - - Updated - - -

It's true though that wrath had the most playable specs and this was the peak of the old talent tree. But it was also very clear back then that this system wouldn't work long term. Many many talents were very unoriginal and many classes would have a lot of the same type of talent across all 3 specs.

I love how the take-away from that is "get rid of the talents, omg!" rather than "change the talents so they're more interesting."

[Biomega]

I love how the take-away from that is "get rid of the talents, omg!" rather than "change the talents so they're more interesting."

I agree that's a bit of a weird take, but it's not entirely surprising - Blizzard has a history of going with simplifying over more complexity. Their aim is mass appeal, after all. The more complicated and choice-heavy things become, the less your average idiot (i.e. the preferred customer) feels they can keep up. That's why PoE for example has such a problem attracting casuals - they feel massively overwhelmed with the complexity of all its systems, and so they stay away from the game.

For that it doesn't even matter if it's ACTUAL complexity, only if it's perceived as being complex. If something looks complicated, a lot of people give up before even looking into it more. That's why Blizzard wants things to look very simple and very straightforward.

The result isn't always good for the game, of course. Both WoW and Diablo 3 have dumbed down their talent system so much it's backed them into a corner, design-wise. We now have some talents that are a downgrade over having NO talent, and silly things like that. It's a hack job built for appearances, and it's starting to show. The decision to go with a different system in DF was inevitable.

That being said, whether or not the DF talents will, in fact, improve things is still unknown. It could be a good change that opens up more diversity. It could be a non-change that remains mired in cookie-cutter hell. It could also be something more like classic talents, where you have an illusion of choice only because most talents are either completely uninteresting or useless or both and the optimal line is pretty clear. We don't know yet.

They promise change and everything, but at the end of the day there's a reason we ended up in the current situation: they like everything to be on the lowest common denominator so they can guarantee the undiscerning super casuals stay subbed; those are the best customers, because they don't look too deep and just keep paying. Of course even those seem to be dropping away at this point, so it's unclear how things will look. Wait and see I guess.

[RobertMugabe]

I love how the take-away from that is "get rid of the talents, omg!" rather than "change the talents so they're more interesting."

You're saying this, because you don't quite get what the flaw with this system was.

The old talent tree was designed around leveling and each time you'd level you would get a new point. Wrath's talent trees were already too big and there was little innovation that was possible at that point too. With Cataclysm, they'd have to add another row with 5 more points for each spec and rebalance the trees again around it. So with time and more expansion releases, the talent tree would just get worse and worse.

So they had to change it. In Cataclysm, they actually did what you are saying, as in change the talents to be more interesting. However they also had to half the points you could get and they made the trees a lot smaller. The Cata talent trees were IMO thus a lot more interesting overall, as I remember that you did actually have more choices (with specific talents, not with specs). However they also disabled the ability for hybrid specs completely as you had to spend 31 (out of 41) points in your main tree first before you could spend them in others.

[Jastall]

I wouldn't say Arms Port Warrior sucked.

It was a dungeon spec that allowed a Warrior to do insane cleave damage as revenge did solid damage and it having a 1sec CD pretty much allowed you to spam it.
It's not a spec you'd be play in raids or PvP, but considering that dungeons were quite the portion of Wotlk for a lot of people, it's certainly a valid spec.

Most of those specs are the result of a single completely OP talent.

It has nothing to do with player being terrible, a talent that basically filled a rogue's combo points within a single GCD would be OP now as it was back then.

It's not that different from having an OPAF talent now, indeed. One quick example is Surrender to Madness early in Legion that made SPriests completely busted. Most of the rest of the old trees didn't give strong enough bonuses to change your playstyle fundamentally.

[ArenaDk]

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BbgROZ9STY

Video features crazy player created specs from Wrath era:

-Honor Among Thieves Rogue
-AoE Fan of Knives interrupt and silence Rogue (pvp)
-Spell Power Enhancement Shaman
-Prot Holy Paladin (converting stamina into spell power...later changed to strength into spell power)
-Preg Pala (Prot Holy Ret Paladin)
-Necromancer caster ranged Deathknight (pvp)
-Dancing rune blood DK DPS (pre nerf)
-Arms Prot Tank Warrior
-Frostfire Mage

And there were many more player created inventions in specs some of which had to be nerfed.

Not gonna read this whole thread so it may already been mentioned.

But bfa had the most options of playstyles. Feral alone had like 8 different builds not including pvp. With many completly using different abilities which arent even filler in other rotations.

Woltk was just random mash, while bfa made this builds all playable , but you had to actually work to build them and fine tune through items

[Goatfish]

<snip>
TL;DR: even if everyone was picking covenants at random you would have to expect each covenant to get 1/4 of all players (25%), so when calculating how many people have chosen to min-max you need to take out 25% we would expect to pick it whether it was best or not. This is amplified by classes like DK and druid who are thematically closely aligned with a specific covenant that’s also their best, so both RPers and min-maxers are disproportionately choosing the same covenant. If you account for that, we swiftly see that actually more like 60-65% of people are picking based on what’s best, which is borne out by looking at classes such as mage which has a very even split with relatively little weighting toward the best covenant.

This is only taking into account no influence or consumer preference. I suggest you listen to Malcolm Gladwells TED talk on spaghetti sauce. Personal preference does not have an even distribution, nor a bell curve even. You were closer in the section where you say that thematics are going to play a big role, and these thematics are pretty varied from mog, how the covenant hall/zone looks, available mounts and pets, and the mini-games for each class hall. Assuming an even 25% distribution is just wrong even if player power were taken away from it. This is easy enough to prove by looking at records of player distribution for picking race or class as well.

It's probably faulty math to assume that 65% of people in the same covenant is completely there because of player power. On the other side it's probably inaccurate to assume that everyone in an off-meta covenant is there purely because they want to be. I assume some are playing with off meta specs, some are levelling other covenants for mog, pets, and achievements, some are there because they are too lazy to level another renown or learn another playstyle. I'd love to see some large scale public polling of the WoW community on some of this stuff. Everquest had some pretty in depth polls that revealed some interesting information, I'd love to see how age/sex relates to what class/spec/race people decide to play.

[Clone]

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BbgROZ9STY

Video features crazy player created specs from Wrath era:

-Honor Among Thieves Rogue
-AoE Fan of Knives interrupt and silence Rogue (pvp)
-Spell Power Enhancement Shaman
-Prot Holy Paladin (converting stamina into spell power...later changed to strength into spell power)
-Preg Pala (Prot Holy Ret Paladin)
-Necromancer caster ranged Deathknight (pvp)
-Dancing rune blood DK DPS (pre nerf)
-Arms Prot Tank Warrior
-Frostfire Mage

And there were many more player created inventions in specs some of which had to be nerfed.

A list of template to copy from is not original.

[FelPlague]

That shit is really cool. I miss the days where most classes had such diversity of choice.

most literally do right now, look to the specs, hell lots of them have multiple, demonolgy having like 3 to 5 seperate playstyles.

[Biomega]

most literally do right now, look to the specs, hell lots of them have multiple, demonolgy having like 3 to 5 seperate playstyles.

That's just not true. At least not if you want to do well.

What they have is different playstyles depending on extraneous factors: do you have the tier bonus? Yes/No. are you doing M+? Yes/No. Within those categories there's INCREDIBLE homogeneity. There's basically only one "right" way to spec (irrelevant utility talents aside) at any given time.

If performance isn't the goal and you just do whatever you want, then diversity is mostly a function of combinatorics. Which doesn't help anyone.

In fact, let's be clear about one thing: "originality" is just one metric, and it's by no means valued equally highly (or highly at all) by all people. To some people it's important, to many others it doesn't really matter. To portray things - even implicitly - as though being original was somehow some grand value to universally aspire to is fallacious from the get-go.