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  1. #41
    Why do talent trees need to be homogenised? Of course they're built by different teams; I would not want the mage class design team working on the druid talent tree.

    Interestingly, the three classes with baseline interrupts are the same classes that have had them since Vanilla WoW. They're core, intrinsic, key abilities that have existed for close to 18 years at this point. I would argue that shamans should be included in that list since Earth Shock also dates back to Classic, but I understand them removing it from their baseline to bring it inline with other healers. Otherwise, the classes without baseline interrupts are those that have historically not had them for every spec or did not have them as core functions. E.g. priests, druids, paladins, monks have not usually had access to an interrupt while healing. Warlocks needed a specific demon out for their interrupt most of the game's history.

    Furthermore, I'd argue that the talent choices are indicative of a larger organisational effort. They specifically made sure that three classes, 1/4 of the total classes, always have an interrupt. You're doing a raid with a key interrupt ability? You just make sure you have one of these three and you're set. Same with dungeons.

    Spreading out utility and power is a good thing; it leads to classes with depth and niche instead of general breadth.
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    – C.S. Lewis

  2. #42
    Okay so a few things here:

    Baseline game mechanics should mean baseline design for all classes. How those abilities look, feel and function don’t actually need to be the same (ie silences, ranged kicks, melee kicks etc.). So the notion of necessary baseline design = “class homogenization” is a complete fallacy.

    Many abilities of a similar function and category are and can still be tailored / suited to their respective classes and specs.

    That said, is it fair that there is no parity and uniformity of a base kit for base mechanics? I’m not sure. If class A is getting “free” talent points then yeah that’s lame. But if class B is making up for it in another area and both classes are more or less just as efficient then maybe that’s fine.

    What would be interesting would be to see which spec effectively has the best latitude in build options, as well as overall efficiency and dps value per point, versus how much budget is a required spend on baseline skills for plain game mechanics.

    That said, interrupts are generally required utility… just as aoe is required dps option for efficient damage. It makes little sense to have this as an option, just as it makes little sense to have required utility, or abilities mainline inside of a dps spec tree. Move all general options into class. If anything get basic mechanic abilities TF out of spec dps trees. Like shadow.
    Last edited by Elestia; 2022-08-04 at 01:01 AM.

  3. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by FossilFree View Post
    It's extremely annoying that priests didn't get silence on their general tree. I was looking forward to finally playing discipline, but no interrupt=no play. Does every spec need a dispel or hard cc? No, but any spec that does dps needs an interrupt, even if that is dpsing to heal like disc.
    Yeah, I was really hope to see something like that as Disc had Silence in the past. I was also hoping they would finally dump Divine Star, and Halo, and bring the better ability, Cascade back instead. I was also hoping for Spectral Guise, and Shadowy Tendrils. Fear Ward would have been nice too.

  4. #44
    Talent trees are severely lacking in quality, at least for most classes and specs. That's expected as it's alpha though - but I fear that they have their focus too much on a few specs (look how much they talk about Hunter) and ignore several others that have core issues.
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  5. #45
    Scarab Lord Razorice's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by klaps_05 View Post
    the goal of the DF talent trees is to set a base. Thats the reason why theres little innovation and mostly rebuilding spellbooks. Once they get that right, in 11.0 they can start introducing new more interesting talents and player power outside of the talents. Point of DF is to create a baseline and calibrate it.
    Sooo... I'm paying a AAA Price for Blizzard to experiment enough so that in 2 years we can possibly have better talent trees?

    Yeah, seems like something Blizzard would do at the expense of it's customer.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Razorice View Post
    Sooo... I'm paying a AAA Price for Blizzard to experiment enough so that in 2 years we can possibly have better talent trees?

    Yeah, seems like something Blizzard would do at the expense of it's customer.
    Technically its for the betterment of the game. Current talent trees have gotten stale and not exciting and with too much filler/99% choices. In Dragonflight they essentially define what a new base for a class is and what toolkit access each class will have (along with the raid buffs). Then in 11.0 they can start iterating ON it. My guess is a lot of classes go live with absolute dog talents as its less than 4 months until release and their updates on talents iterations are very slow and some talent trees like feral or all of the mage ones need to be delete and started from scratch.

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Twdft View Post
    What are those choices you expect to get, other than halfway ST, cleave and AoE specs? What exactly do you want to choose if not to specialize into either ST, cleave or AoE?
    Just to echo what others have said, this doesn't seem like a remotely interesting choice to me. The choice to do Ae dmg (to me) should be "use a difference sequence of buttons," not change your spec and lose the ability to do something else. This also has balance implications because inevitably some specs will have to completely give up decent ST dmg to do AE, meanwhile someone lucky will be able to do it all and be better for dungeons etc automatically.

    Talent playstyle and utility choices are where it is at, imo! Choosing to mutate an ability to do one thing or another, choosing to play (for example) breath of sindragosa vs obliteration, and so on!

    That's way more interesting than "let me make sure i remember to turn on my AE dmg spec before zoning into the dungeon"

  8. #48
    Scarab Lord Polybius's Avatar
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    I honestly don’t mind it. It means I can now sacrifice a baseline power for a diff one depending on the situation. I just hope they have the UI ready to save specs and switch on the go.

  9. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Alcsaar View Post
    I completely disagree. Some level of homogenization is required in order for there to be BALANCE.
    Not true at all.

    Look at the way they used to make RTS'.

    You have Warcraft 1+2 where you literally had mirrored armies.

    And then you had Starcraft where they had 3 asymmetric armies with almost no mirroring at all. Terran don't even have a single melee combat unit (firebats are considered ranged)

    Balance can be achieved without homogenization or symmetry required. Balance is measured by the overall min-max values that a class can perform in any given role. When that min-max value is balanced, then the classes are considered balanced. It doesn't matter if Class A has 3 more Interrupts/Stuns than Class B. Balance is not calculated based on symmetry or homogenization, it's determined by overall effectiveness of the class and what utility they bring to the group.

    WoW can be balanced by having classes that have many interrupts and classes that do not have any at all. That is because the overall effectiveness of a group to overcome any given challenge is completely based on how they manage all the skills they have available, not by having everyone having an equal toolset. For example, giving every class getting their own heal/self heal at a certain level doesn't contribute to the overall balance of the game.
    Last edited by Triceron; 2022-08-04 at 07:18 PM.

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Alcsaar View Post
    Talent trees lack serious cohesion and themes between classes. A lot of the design decisions are completely opposite.

    Some classes just get back things they had before and very few or no new things, while other classes get all their good stuff base line, and then much of the stuff in the trees is new.

    Then we have other super weird inconsistencies, like classes that don't get their interrupt base line and have to spec into it, while classes like warriors, rogues, and mages do.

    We all know that these trees are built by different teams, but how hard is it to sit down with each other and at least come up with a general formula for the trees? Some teams did a really great job, and then others just completely shit all over the trees for the respective classes, and that is not fair to those classes getting shafted.
    OP is 100% right, it is glaring, obvious and jarring. They should just do what we want--all the basic rotation is baseline or for speccing in (yes just like classic wow) and interrupts are baseline. Leaving talent trees for all classes as a "best of" past effects and new abilities and talents.

  11. #51
    Scarab Lord Razorice's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by klaps_05 View Post
    Technically its for the betterment of the game. Current talent trees have gotten stale and not exciting and with too much filler/99% choices. In Dragonflight they essentially define what a new base for a class is and what toolkit access each class will have (along with the raid buffs). Then in 11.0 they can start iterating ON it. My guess is a lot of classes go live with absolute dog talents as its less than 4 months until release and their updates on talents iterations are very slow and some talent trees like feral or all of the mage ones need to be delete and started from scratch.
    I don't want to pay for a AAA for it to "potentially" become better in 2 years time. It's like paying for a new car and only getting the wheels, because it's for the betterment of the vehicles. Also, I checked the new talent trees for some of the classes I play, it's same talents we have now, with added talents from SL Covenants, rest of the talents are filler.

  12. #52
    Quote Originally Posted by Alcsaar View Post
    Talent trees lack serious cohesion and themes between classes. A lot of the design decisions are completely opposite.
    Because Hunters are nothing like Death Knights who are nothing like Mages who are nothing like Rogues who are nothing like Druids....

  13. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by Firefall View Post
    OP is 100% right, it is glaring, obvious and jarring. They should just do what we want--all the basic rotation is baseline or for speccing in (yes just like classic wow) and interrupts are baseline. Leaving talent trees for all classes as a "best of" past effects and new abilities and talents.
    With how they've been executing the talent trees, it supports a long-held idea I've had about this expansion and certain features of it: a lot of this wasn't originally planned for Dragonflight.

    The manner in which WoW has been tackled since 9.1.5 has appeared more like panic than real change, because it all comes off as "we're in trouble... quick! Just shove everything in that players have been asking for year to stop the hemorrhaging!" While that might not have been the entire reason for the changes that started then, it was a major one. With that in mind, I feel that systems changes like talent trees for Dragonflight was not originally in the cards. When I first heard the talent tree system was coming back, a lot of my friends envisioned the classic versions coming back, but I had a different immediate reaction. My immediate reaction was that they'll execute talent trees in a similar fashion that BfA did things: Blizz will strip down the classes and make players have to spec into things that were once baseline, and any borrowed power system that was planned or currently existed (legendaries, artifact powers, covenants, etc.) would be made talent... and it turns out my immediate reaction was correct.

    Tying into my next point:

    Quote Originally Posted by Razorice View Post
    I don't want to pay for a AAA for it to "potentially" become better in 2 years time. It's like paying for a new car and only getting the wheels, because it's for the betterment of the vehicles. Also, I checked the new talent trees for some of the classes I play, it's same talents we have now, with added talents from SL Covenants, rest of the talents are filler.
    What remains to be seen is whether these changes are Blizz actually turning a new leaf or are in panic mode still. The unfortunate reality is that while some aspects of the game are changing for the better, there are a lot of fundamental issues in the game that are the source of many headaches that are not changing. Such non-fundamental changes are more superficial, so they can easily be reverted even mid-expansion, while fundamental change requires a complete overhaul in thinking and design philosophy. Honestly, making fundamental changes to the game would only be feasible if you planned such changes for an expansion so we're left with two options: Blizz isn't planning on fundamentally changing the game for the better anytime soon, or none of this was planned until late in the development process.

    That said, my mindset has been that no matter what, I wouldn't be playing Dragonflight and would only come back the expansion after Dragonflight at the earliest. I realize that fundamental change takes time, and not only did Blizz not have the time to implement it immediately but also spoke directly against making fundamental changes to the game in some cases. If Blizz is really serious about making the game better in the long term, this means that Dragonflight will probably be the expansion where the growing pains will be felt. If Blizz isn't really serious about making the game better (i.e. it's just panic mode and lip service), Dragonflight at best would be a temporary reprieve until Blizz just slips back to their old ways in future patches/expansions.

    There's still a lot of evidence that Blizz is still the same old Blizz, but only time will tell. Doesn't mean I don't want Dragonflight to be an awesome expansion for those who play it, but I'm more interested in the game correcting course in the long term than huffing compium at any spec of positive news.
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  14. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Razorice View Post
    I don't want to pay for a AAA for it to "potentially" become better in 2 years time. It's like paying for a new car and only getting the wheels, because it's for the betterment of the vehicles. Also, I checked the new talent trees for some of the classes I play, it's same talents we have now, with added talents from SL Covenants, rest of the talents are filler.
    Not defending it in any way, you should not pay for box and 24 months of talents being calibrated. When they announced talents, people were excited because the idea was 1. make sure you have a class that fully works, with spells and toolkit and 2. provide talents which allow you to better match the content you are doing.

    Unfortunately they went with the idea of playing "build a spellbook" which means they need an expansion to figure out what should be in the spellbook shop before going forward with newer stuff. Another unfortunate thing is they think Shadowlands status of classes is what is good, when we have had entire years before when classes felt incredible (bfa fire mage, prot warrior, legion affliction/boomkin, etc.).

    In the end, ppl vote with their wallet.

  15. #55
    Some classes are more sinful than others in regards to the following criticism, but my issue with the new talents is that some classes are forced to dump a significant amount of points in passive 0/2 and 0/3 talents to get their full value, which is compounded by said talents being a roadblock to advance further down a tree/obtain capstones. Retribution Paladin is terrible for this, as they have a staggering 16-20 ranks of talents that are nothing but "increases haste by x%" or "increases Holy damage by x%". These abilities don't even mix-up or fundamentally change our rotations, they are just there to be filler talents to ensure our DPS remains competitive and nothing more.

    Also something worth mentioning in regards to Paladins is that we cannot invest spare points into greater utility because of how many DPS nodes are scattered throughout our core tree. And when we DO get new defensive utility, they replace an existing utility (BoP becoming BoS) so our defensive kit is more or less the same. If you compare DK's core tree to Paladin's core tree, DK's get access to TONS of easy to obtain defensives that significantly boost their survivability and raid viability (AMZ, Will of the Necropolis, Blood Draw, ect.) without sacrificing their DPS potential.

    The saying "You only have one first chance to make one first impression that lasts a lifetime" should linger in the back of devs minds as they create and tweak the new talent trees as the PTR continues, because paying fans deserve Blizzard's best efforts when the expansion drops, not a half-assed attempt at cohesion that they will fix "eventually, maybe". I'd rather they delay the expansion to ensure that every class feels great to play, with their new talents and mechanics breathing fresh life into the game rather than strip away and rehash what has already been done.
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  16. #56
    Herald of the Titans enigma77's Avatar
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    there is a massive quality difference between warrior/shaman trees and mage tree

    mage is full of gargabe filler talents that make you spend 3 points to get negligible power increases, you barely get anything new, you can barely pick anything at the bottom of the tree because you must waste all your points on worthless 3 point talents

    meanwhile warrior is full of 1 point talents, you get tons of cool stuff and you have a lot of choices

    the mage dev is an idiot
    Last edited by enigma77; 2022-08-04 at 06:55 PM.

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by George View Post
    Good, the more different classes are, the better. Homogenization among classes is not something to be desired.
    LOL you mean like how some have no AoE Caps while some are Cap at 5. Yes 100% balance when doing M+.

  18. #58
    I agree im really scared of those trees right now , hope they clean them up soon. my main I have decided is goign to be an elemental shaman, with alts fire mage and bm hunter. .. I im hoping these are just rough drafts..

  19. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by Alcsaar View Post
    I completely disagree. Some level of homogenization is required in order for there to be BALANCE. And the homogenization is still there, its just bullshit that some classes have to spec back into it while others dont.

    Its time to stop using homogenization concerns as an excuse for making some classes simply better than others. Balance is far more important to the game than making everyone feel like a snow flake, while some get fucked and others get to be overpowered.
    Completely disagree.

    Not everone needs to give a fuck about balance to that degree. Balance, while yes important, should not take absolute precedent over class identity and fantasy.

    Might I add, with a lot of the bullshit gone (Conduits, Leggos etc) balance, hypothetically, will be easier to achieve at the end of the day. I want certain classes to better than others in certain things, and I think that's better for the overall health of the game, not just end game raiding.

  20. #60
    Stealthed Defender unbound's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by George View Post
    Good, the more different classes are, the better. Homogenization among classes is not something to be desired.
    Completely agree.

    WoW classes are too similar. Pretty much every rdps plays like every other rdps, every mdps plays like every other mdps, and there are generally only minor differences in how different healers with with AoE heals or how different tanks deal with mitigation.

    The whole "bring the player not the class" just invited this silly homogeneity where nothing feels unique and playing alts feels increasingly pointless. Blizz embraced this approach out of laziness (i.e. cutting costs), not because it was good for the game.

    Let individual classes feel individual again.

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