Is the intention of the "new" talent system that some points are just wasted?

[Alcsaar]

I personally love the talent trees. So far the two i have delved the most in are full of interesting choices. Evoker and Shaman are trees that packed with things that i want, and having to choose and make sacrifices is actually really interesting. The shaman class tree for example is loaded with utility, and i have made 3 builds already that i could use for various things happily.

They are psuedo choices, because most of the "choices" are choosing between things you already had before, minus a couple exceptions - and often ending up with less than you had before. If you can show me a shaman tree where you really believe you're getting more from it than you got before, I'd love to see it. I'm sure you lost things that you had.

[Sciborg]

I don't think it's the intention, but some are more well designed than others. Assassination has gained some fairly substantial potential with shadow dance, other specs not so much.

[Alcsaar]

I don't think it's the intention, but some are more well designed than others. Assassination has gained some fairly substantial potential with shadow dance, other specs not so much.

Out of all the trees I've looked at, rogue looks like the tree that actually got implemented as I would have expected to see talent trees implemented. Rogues aren't spending points for their finishers/spenders or their generators or fillers. They actually got nice interesting new talents instead, and increased flexibility/power (Like you mentioned, shadow dance)

[bloodwulf]

They are psuedo choices, because most of the "choices" are choosing between things you already had before, minus a couple exceptions - and often ending up with less than you had before. If you can show me a shaman tree where you really believe you're getting more from it than you got before, I'd love to see it. I'm sure you lost things that you had.

I dont think they are pseudochoices. The shaman class tree for one gives me the opportunity to trade things that i may not have need for, but used to have, for things that i didnt have previously but could really use. For instance, just the class tree alone i can get things like cleansing, mana gain for party, burst healing, that i did not have significant amounts of previously. Several of the builds i am looking at with my typical M+ party in mind, and i just feel like i have so much more versatility with the builds at this point.

[Goatfish]

They are psuedo choices, because most of the "choices" are choosing between things you already had before, minus a couple exceptions - and often ending up with less than you had before. If you can show me a shaman tree where you really believe you're getting more from it than you got before, I'd love to see it. I'm sure you lost things that you had.

I said it before, but this is just seems like a false perception. Instead of losing all the borrowed power, you are only losing some of it. In Legion we lost our weapon and legendary powers completely. In BFA we lost our Heart of Azeroth powers and corruption completely. In Shadowlands, we would have lost access to our covenant/conduit powers and legendaries completely. In every new tier we end up losing reliable access to tier set/dom socket powers.

Can you give me an example of a baseline ability that you are losing all access to with the talent tree change?

[jeezusisacasual]

So many people upset with changes to a better talent system. Most people that are upset is because there's no clear cut 'best' for them to google yet. The return of these talent trees is to open up some more uniqueness to each player, being able to build how they want instead of as the one viable option.

What's really crazy to me is people complaining about 'wasted' points and how the MOP style was better because you could just pick the option you want regardless of previous choices but really, I don't understand that complaint. Like, you have what, 7 choices? 7 points vs 61 points. So okay, maybe one (or more) of those points are 'useless' but you still get WAY more choices/useful points than 7 you would have.

In my opinion, these talents real goal, in which they were successful in, is to make builds less cookie cutter, to make you have to make actual decisions in regards to how you want to play. Not just give you everything. Granted eventually there will be 'bis builds but for now, if you look at it though, they did a great job giving you tough decisions.

I know a lot of people just want everything and want for Blizzard to just force feed them a spec, but for those that actually want to think and work on making interesting/fun builds, this will do just that. Worst case, if the vocal majority is unhappy with the talent trees, Blizzard will get rid of them again. For now, just relax and let other people have fun for once. We've put up with subpart talent systems for years now, y'all can survive one xpac.

Doing the most damage is what is considered fun and if we have the ability to determine if people spec for a kick or not you can guess which will not be invited to a group even if that person is really bad at kicking before hand. There will be meta builds and since i again play a tank will help determine what is easiest for me to complete the key or the path of least resistence to complete the key. Its an illusion of choice when you break it down but sure someone somewhere will find some build they make work and thats great for them but i have expectations.

[Alcsaar]

I said it before, but this is just seems like a false perception. Instead of losing all the borrowed power, you are only losing some of it. In Legion we lost our weapon and legendary powers completely. In BFA we lost our Heart of Azeroth powers and corruption completely. In Shadowlands, we would have lost access to our covenant/conduit powers and legendaries completely. In every new tier we end up losing reliable access to tier set/dom socket powers.

Can you give me an example of a baseline ability that you are losing all access to with the talent tree change?

Well, at least one example is that for Balance druids, you have to choose between Convoke or Ascendance. Obviously Convoke was a covenant skill, but having had both and now only getting to pick one is a huge downer.

For Death knights, you have to go out of the way to spec into utility/self healing like Death Strike and will give up some other base utility you had (like perhaps CoI) to get it.

But on top of that, the illusion of choice is a result of balance. When one talent is better than another (and they will be), its not really a choice. Sure some people will handicap themselves for flavour, but the majority of people aren't going to do that. "Choices" never make sense unless they are balanced. We had this same problem with covenants and countless other systems in the past.

[Kralljin]

The thing is the new trees are replacing old talents AND what you would get while leveling. Most people here are only viewing the system as it appears at endgame, which I understand to a degree.

A design choice but also one that raises the question: why?

You could just take all these "baseline abilities" and move to them to the leveling process like usual.
I don't think Shaman will have Lava burst from level one under this new system anyway.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

A design choice but also one that raises the question: why?

You could just take all these "baseline abilities" and move to them to the leveling process like usual.
I don't think Shaman will have Lava burst from level one under this new system anyway.

It’s them trying to mimic classic. In classic you’d get your point every level and then go back to the trainer every two for new skills as the talent points were mostly passives. Trainers aren’t a thing any more but they still want to mimic the feel of picking up new skills without them just being handed to you automatically and a point to spend every level.

At max this obviously won’t matter but they (and Microsoft) have said they want to bring more people into the game so this Ives them a way to do a classic esc progress system and a bit of spec flexibility.

[Lochton]

Just like all previous talent trees, the exploration of the tree will die once the meta gets released, and everyone will spec the same.

For me, I am enjoying the look of the new talent trees, as I can build specs befitting my gameplay. Heck, even one of the setups had be not complete the full tree.

[Ghost of Cow]

This is what people asked for, so it's what they got.

It just looks bigger and more big and wow so big and...big! So everyone's lizard brain tells them that it must be great because bigger is better and it must mean that it's so complex and you can do so much!!!!

So yeah, it exists purely because of feels, really.

[Goatfish]

Well, at least one example is that for Balance druids, you have to choose between Convoke or Ascendance. Obviously Convoke was a covenant skill, but having had both and now only getting to pick one is a huge downer.

For Death knights, you have to go out of the way to spec into utility/self healing like Death Strike and will give up some other base utility you had (like perhaps CoI) to get it.

But on top of that, the illusion of choice is a result of balance. When one talent is better than another (and they will be), its not really a choice. Sure some people will handicap themselves for flavour, but the majority of people aren't going to do that. "Choices" never make sense unless they are balanced. We had this same problem with covenants and countless other systems in the past.

None of that is satisfactory to answer the question posed. As you said, Convoke is a covenant skill you would have lost access to anyway, and Death Strike is still available (pretty easily). Now, if speccing into Death Strike prevents you from gaining access to other talents that are also baseline, this would fulfill the necessary requirement of my query, but that just doesn't seem to be the case for any spec I've seen.

As far as "flavour" choices vs balance... We don't have any of the actual numbers for nearly any of the talents. Imbalance is always going to exist if you want a reasonable amount of diversity of choice which is a necessary component of "flavour" in the first place. Homogeneity kills the distinctive "flavour" of a class far worse than something being imbalanced, regardless of how many people self-homogenize into a single spec.

[Alcsaar]

None of that is satisfactory to answer the question posed. As you said, Convoke is a covenant skill you would have lost access to anyway, and Death Strike is still available (pretty easily). Now, if speccing into Death Strike prevents you from gaining access to other talents that are also baseline, this would fulfill the necessary requirement of my query, but that just doesn't seem to be the case for any spec I've seen.

As far as "flavour" choices vs balance... We don't have any of the actual numbers for nearly any of the talents. Imbalance is always going to exist if you want a reasonable amount of diversity of choice which is a necessary component of "flavour" in the first place. Homogeneity kills the distinctive "flavour" of a class far worse than something being imbalanced, regardless of how many people self-homogenize into a single spec.

My point is there SHOULDNT be flavour vs balance choices. All choices should be nearly equivalent in their performance, and then you get to choose which you prefer.

Flavour vs performance has always been a terrible point of design. Covenants had the exact same issue. Thematically I might like necrolord and want to play it, but I'm not going to if my performance suffers for it because night fae is better, causing me to bring down the people I play with. There should never be a choice between power vs aesthetics/lore

[Deferionus]

Thats my 2nd biggest problem with the trees, besides core abilities being "talents". The nicest part of mop style talents is if I want to pick a talent in 1 row, it is completely independent of my ability to pick a talent in a dif row. There's obviously interactions between talents but if I want talent X, I just select talent X. I don't have to path down, putting a bunch of pts in shit I don't want just to get to it.

Problem with MOP style talents are classes where you had what was previous baseline abilities in the same row. For example, my affliction warlock had both death coil and instant howl of terror. In current talents, it is one or the other. I also cannot get soul link as affliction because it is hard coded to demonology. It was the loss of doing hybrid builds picking up these different components that has felt bad for me for years.

[Goatfish]

My point is there SHOULDNT be flavour vs balance choices. All choices should be nearly equivalent in their performance, and then you get to choose which you prefer.

Flavour vs performance has always been a terrible point of design. Covenants had the exact same issue. Thematically I might like necrolord and want to play it, but I'm not going to if my performance suffers for it because night fae is better, causing me to bring down the people I play with. There should never be a choice between power vs aesthetics/lore

This is just a bad take that vastly misunderstands the mechanics involved in creating that diversity in the first place. I would also note that playing off-meta is usually not a true gamebreaker in term of output. Many of the people in my guild play off meta (myself included) and do perfectly fine. You seem to just be mad that the thematics that you enjoy are not tied to the statistical best abilities.

I will say in the particular case of Shadowlands, it didn't make any sense to align yourself with a single of 4 covenants when the entire theme is uniting these 4 covenants to fight against a big bad. I think this was actually a thematically bad design decision that leaked out to create the mechanical decision rather than the other way around. There is no thematic reason why you should need to transfer aligned covenants at all. The balance numbers wise could have been maintained by tying your covenant abilities to the soulbind you picked, but the switching covenant feature is antithetical to the story and obtuse to the mechanics.

[Djaye]

Well, they're useless in a lot of content, and nichely useful in some. Having said that, they're still pretty bad, even in pvp, which is where they'd see the most use. Thrashing a rogue to help keep them out of stealth is nice QOL, sure, but you're still stuck with those talents when you'll never use them, like progression raiding/mythic+/etc

Am I going to pop into bear form to thrash in a mythic+ or raid as a balance druid? Am I going to be ironfur tanking anything in that content? Absolutely not. But I still have to have those talents because of all the shit that is locked behind them.

you just defeated your own point. there are talents that are pve and pvp useful. why are you bitching about useless pvp talents in pve? dont want them, dont take them.
if you think that there is a build that is going to keep you covered for pve and pvp, there isnt. that is part of the point of the trees and you completely missed it.
i dont want pve utility in my BG's, its wasted points for me. hence, why my pvp build doesnt have them and every point i use is utilized for my current playstyle. same goes for pve. im not going to spec into scattershot, when i can bump the effectiveness on my group utility instead.

[Akelina]

My biggest problem is that some spec utility is in spec tree when it should be in class tree or baseline. Shadow priest is best example. There is no way you are taking Improved dispersion, Stun, Vampiric Embrace instead of any throughput talent.

[oland138]

Some of these criticisms seem ridiculous to me. "oh no, I have to waste points to get what I want" is nitpicky in general, but can be valid in the context of what you have to give up to get there.

At a glance, it looks like you need to spend 6 points on "core" balance abilities in the class tree. Thick hide costs 2 points, and you have to waste another 4 points to get there. It's a whopping 6 talent point investment for 6% passive damage reduction. Those wasted points pave the way for you to spend 2 more on 15% passive movement speed, and another 4 points for a melee interrupt (after wasting 3 more points on physical damage and an armor increase, of course).

Of course, those abilities are only going to be wasted if you don't use them. If you want skull bash utility as a balance druid, would you not be throwing out a rake and a rip while you're at it? I get that you're not going to be a laser chicken for a few seconds, but interrupts can be pretty valuable. If you go for furor and primal fury you could probably easily get out a full rake in a few seconds while you go in for an interrupt. If you get circle of life and death on the balance side, rip's duration pretty much lines up with skull bash cooldown, and adaptive swarm will buff the damage.

I dunno man. If you want to just play the caster style and stick to that side of the tree, is it really that big of a deal to lose out on 6% DR? You can fill out almost the entire other side of the tree if you don't waste those points on the prereqs for Thick Hide. On live, if you get Guardian affinity (which includes 6% DR) you have to choose that over resto affinity. I am struggling to understand what the problem is other than "I can't get every single talent that I want".

Maybe I am a bit off base since I don't play druid, but these talents actually make me want to play it because shapeshifting as balance looks like it might not be a complete joke. I'm sure it won't be meta or anything, but it sounds fun to me.

- - - Updated - - -

My biggest problem is that some spec utility is in spec tree when it should be in class tree or baseline. Shadow priest is best example. There is no way you are taking Improved dispersion, Stun, Vampiric Embrace instead of any throughput talent.

This to me looks like a pretty valid criticism. Pretty much goes against what their design goals are.

[Sparklelord]

Ok now go look at those "61" pts and subtract 1 for every core ability and passive u have. Watch that 61 drop down to abt 30. Then in those 30 count how many are multi pt %increases to an ability.

On the flip side, look at those "7" pts and add pts for each legendary and covenant ability you have. Also 6 conduits that are now talents.

You'll see the overall pts are a lot closer than you think. You can do some unique stuff in the new system for sure. But you're also locked out of some stuff you can actually do right now as well.

Exactly my point. You shouldn't have access to EVERYTHING. That's the same "We should have all legendaries" or "We should have the full covenant tree". People being afraid to make a choice cause they're scared it will be the wrong one. Scared they won't be 'meta' enough. RPGs are always about choices and the more choices we have the better instead of literally a bunch of cookie cutters walking around. Again, it will still be a thing cause a lot of people can't think for themselves (or can't be bothered) and will just use w/e WoWVeins tells them too and that's okay. That's their choice.

The point I was making is exactly what you mentioned though, that you're going to have roughly the same 'impactful' choices to make when it's all said and done. However, what's impactful for everyone is different though. If you're that worried about it, maybe choice isn't for you. just copy and paste w/e the 'bis build' is and call it a day.

To each their own though, do what you enjoy. This talent system or the old one, it won't impact people like you cause at the end of the day you'll still have the 'bis' talents.

-------

Doing the most damage is what is considered fun for me

Fixed that for you.

Yes, doing the 'most damage' is fun for a lot of people and there's nothing wrong with that. I wasn't bashing that specifically, just calling out there will be 'bis builds' and that's fine too. But end of the day, the difference between a lot of these talents will be percents of a percent and not going to be the end of the world unless you're in the top .5% of PvEers in a bleeding edge guild sweating for every fraction of DPS you can manage. But if you're doing keys or heroics, losing 1% damage won't be the end of the world.

It's much more fun (as you said) and enjoyable to play a spec and just have fun with it and take the 1% damage loss. Like imagine you had the option to do 5% more top end damage but you only spammed one button, literally nothing else, couldn't even move or jump or you could have like 10 abilities and some wiggle room in your rotation to do what you wanted, I'd still take the rotation over the one button droolfest.

Maybe you want to zone out with a basic rotation and find enjoyment ONLY in being top damage, but that's the FOTM slope and only last as long as no one is outperforming you. I'd much rather have fun and enjoy the game as a whole than force myself into something miserable. The same mindset people have when leveling, picking the 'bis' spec instead of something fun to make leveling more enjoyable.

There can be some crossover, these are just extreme examples.

You say illusion of choice because you're trapped by your own insecurities and assumptions. There's always a choice, people like you will always just feel compelled to 'choose' the 'best' option even if it's purely opinion based. Again, to each their own.

[Neuroticaine]

I've been playing around with the new talent trees for DF, and I can't help but feel like a lot of the time talents feel unimpactful or even entirely useless in order to get the talents below them.

For example, the baseline druid tree has a ton of useless sink points. In order to get Thick Hide, which is a really nice 6% flat damage reduction, I have to spec into Frenzied Regen (fine), Thrash, Swipe, and Ironfur (all bad/will never see any use).

I'm just trying to wrap my head around these new talent set ups. I was under the impression that every talent would be an interesting choice or have some direct impact on gameplay, but it feels like that isn't the case for maybe as much as 25-40% of the talents I pick up.

Then the other extreme - having to spend talent points to get core abilities which are required for the spec to function. For example, shadow priests have to spend talents speccing into mind flay and devouring plague... Why don't assassination rogues have to spec into envenom, if this is the path Blizzard is taking for talents? It wouldn't even be as bad for assassination - at least they still would have eviscerate to use instead, but balance/shadow literally have no other spender

Sure, a 6% damage negation is a nice thing to have, but that's the kind of choice they want you to make. Is that nice to have thing worth it for you in your current situation to spend that many points? 6% likely isn't going to be a make it or break it situation for most players, while being a very useful thing for a Guardian druid to have, so it's in a logical place in the tree for a Guardian, and even high enough that most druids that find themselves in situations where it would be useful can grab it, like feral or feral affinity resto druid in PvP, where shifting into bear form and popping iron fur could actually be situationally very useful.

You have a valid point regarding Devouring Plague, though. I find it very hard to build a shadow build without taking it as an obvious early point anyway, but it is theoretically possible to spec all the way through the tree without grabbing it. But it is very possible that things like that could change in future iteration. They've already made some pretty big changes for other classes/specs.