Dragonflight Beta - Upcoming Changes to Rogue and Hunter Class Trees

[Lumy]

Dragonflight Beta - Upcoming Changes to Rogue Class Tree

Hello Rogues,

Let’s talk talents, specifically the class tree:



There are a few notable changes here, with talent position changes being more clear, and some less clear from the picture alone, which we’ll point out.

Delete Improved Sap

We’ve heard significant discussion around this talent, the degree to which it isn’t very compelling (even situationally), and the ways in which it clashes with other talent on the class tree and spec trees. As a result, it’s been redesigned:



you’re always going to go to the Sub side to take Cheat Death.

Cheat Death is certainly compelling, and players have pointed out how it puts undue emphasis on the Subtlety-themed side of the tree. The solution we’ve decided on is to move it up the tree to a more accessible spot (previously occupied by Recuperator), but now as a choice against the similarly-powerful Elusiveness. Recuperator has moved to the previous position of Elusiveness, and a reworked version of Soothing Darkness is taking the previous position Cheat Death.



There are few more positional changes.

Deeper Strategem
I don’t understand why this was swapped with MfD and becomes mandatory ?

As it turns out, neither talent is well-suited to being positioned on a main highway. Deeper Stratagem is joining Marked for Death, as a choice node:



Improved Ambush is taking the position Deeper Stratagem was in. Nightstalker and Tight Spender are swapping positions and point costs as a result, with slightly adjusted values to accommodate.

Beyond positional changes, a few talents have had costs changed.

locking Marked for Death behind 3pt alacrity and locking Cold Blood behind 3pt lethality makes for way less choices in builds

Lethality and Alacrity have become 2-point talents. Lethality remains the same per-point value, and Alacrity has had numbers slightly adjusted to accommodate the change (most notably, granting up to 8% Haste at max stacks).

suggestion:

• Resounding Clarity reduced to 1 point node, gives 3 more anima CPs (exactly the same as on live)

Sold. Resounding Clarity is now a 1-point talent, and causes Echoing Reprimand to Animacharge 3 additional combo points.
Something that we’re aware of as a potential knock-on effect of this and the other above changes, is Echoing Reprimand becoming more appealing to take in some builds than it was before. For those who don’t mind the one-Animacharge minigame of Echoing Reprimand but don’t want to feel forced into the full four-Animacharge version, we’re considering adding Reverberation (formerly a Conduit) with an appropriate value to go up against Resounding Clarity as a choice node.

Thank you for your feedback so far, and we welcome any continued discussion. Cheers.

Dragonflight Beta - Upcoming Changes to Hunter Class Tree

Hunters,

We wanted to discuss some changes coming in a build next week.

Class Tree:

• Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus has been removed.
• Serrated Shots has moved to where Nesingwary’s Trapping Apparatus was.
• Sentinel Owl and the choice node below it have moved up 1 row.
  
  • Sentinel Owl and its choice node are no longer NYI, but still have some issues to be work out.
  • Sentinel’s Wisdom has changed in design. It now grants your party 5% leech and 10% magic damage reduction (everything except Physical) while the Sentinel Owl is active.
• Binding Shot is now a 3 sec stun (see earlier post about Binding Shot)
• New 1-point Talent: Entrapment. When your Tar Trap is activated, all enemies in the Tar Trap’s area are rooted for 4 sec. This root can break from taking damage, and is magic dispellable.

Beast Mastery

• Wailing Arrow silence lowered from 5 to 3 sec, and the tooltip now clarifies it only silences non-player targets.
• Qa’pla, Eredun War Order should now work.
• The pet damage reduction from Animal Companion no longer reduces the damage dealt by other summoned creatures. How Animal Companion pet damage modifier works with Call of the Wild is still being worked out.

Marksmanship

• Lone Wolf and Hunter’s Knowledge have swapped spots again.
• Wailing Arrow silence lowered from 5 to 3 sec, and the tooltip now clarifies it only silences non-player targets.

Have a nice weekend!

Dragonflight Beta - Upcoming Changes to Enhancement Shaman Abilities

Enhancement Shaman,

A minor change is coming next week for Elemental Blast and Lava Burst interactions in the Enhancement Shaman tree.

Elemental Blast and Lava Burst on their own are not changing. If you take both talents, Elemental Blast will replace Lava Burst, and Elemental Blast will have 2 charges.

Elemental Blast and Lava burst are not changing for Elemental Shaman, they will remain separate spells. This is an Enhancement specific change.

[yuyang1shi]

rogue players want SPEC TREE change, but u give CLASS tree change....
like yeterday comments: as first wave exposed class talent(4th), waiting for 2 month, only get 6 sentence feedback with 1 skill changes.
now u just directly pass the spec tree moving into class tree.....
"I swear there's not a single dev at Blizzard that actually plays and enjoys rogue, they just begrudgingly keep dragging the class along because they have to."

[Trumpcat]

The Hunter dev should be game director or at least class/combat lead. Maybe then he can influence so that all classes or all aspects of the game get similar attention, reaction to feedback and communication that Hunters get. There has been no feature or any part of the new expansion that we've heard about even half of what we've heard about Hunters.

[Firebeast]

The Hunter dev should be game director or at least class/combat lead. Maybe then he can influence so that all classes or all aspects of the game get similar attention, reaction to feedback and communication that Hunters get. There has been no feature or any part of the new expansion that we've heard about even half of what we've heard about Hunters.

Beast mastery feels completely underwhelming at level 70 in the beta. Still waiting for some decent AOE abilities and what is up with the stupid owl?????You keep changing things and nothing is better

[Lodravel]

rogue players want SPEC TREE change, but u give CLASS tree change....
like yeterday comments: as first wave exposed class talent(4th), waiting for 2 month, only get 6 sentence feedback with 1 skill changes.
now u just directly pass the spec tree moving into class tree.....
"I swear there's not a single dev at Blizzard that actually plays and enjoys rogue, they just begrudgingly keep dragging the class along because they have to."

Apparently there'll also be sub rogue talent changes in the coming build. The recent blogpost previewing Danse Macabre (new sub capstone talent) says as much.

[XMD7007]

I like how they call these things "choice nodes" when in reality they are "exclusion nodes".

[Niwes]

let’s be honest here: it’s a giant waste of of time.

imo the only reason for that talent stuff is to create marketing, interests and some strong looking feature (because DF has a rather short feature list), as well as some reason for small informical blue posts. you can shove a few talents around and with low amounts of investment easily look like „they are doing something“.

the reason why i say this: it’s all a giant waste of time. cause 4 weeks after DF release there will be guides out there, telling 95% of the player base what exactly to click in talent trees. the dream of „there is no cookie cutter build“ is just a dream. because of 2 reasons:

1) even when builds differ by 1% all ppls choose the one that is 1% better.
2) there is no 1% difference, because Blizzard is shit AF when it comes down to balancing.

heck, they can’t even balance 36 specs against each other. and now ppl think they can balance a spec inside itself, against different talent trees? that’s just naive AF. but even if Blizz could, there will always be a difference, even it is 0,001%. and most ppl still will take the 0,001% better build.

so, all in all, in the end it’s a giant waste of time and just there for looking good. and because Blizz has no better ideas (besides player progression systems, players have really enough of, after Legion, BfA and SL). it may look nice. it may offer some funny spec mixes. but 95% of all players will click what some theorycraft homepage will tell em.

so, in the end, wether all the hunter stuff, nor the lowcost rogue stuff, will matter much.

but that’s just my opinion.

[Lodravel]

let’s be honest here: it’s a giant waste of of time.

the only reason for that talent stuff is to create marketing, interests and some strong looking feature (because DF has a rather short feature list), as well as some reason for small informical blue posts. you can shove a few talents around and with low amounts of investment easily look like „they are doing something“.

the reason why i say this: it’s all a giant waste of time. cause 4 weeks after DF release there will be guides out there, telling 95% of the player base what exactly to click in talent trees. the dream of „there is no cookie cutter build“ is just a dream. because of 2 reasons:

1) even when builds differ by 1% all ppls choose the one that is 1% better.
2) there is no 1% difference, because Blizzard is shit AF when it comes down to balancing.

heck, they can’t even balance 36 specs against each other. and now ppl think they can balance a spec inside itself, against different talent trees? that’s just naive AF. but even if Blizz could, there will always be a difference, even it is 0,001%. and most ppl still will take the 0,001% better build.

so, all in all, in the end it’s a giant waste of time and just there for looking good. and because Blizz has no better ideas (besides player progression systems, players have really enough of, after Legion, BfA and SL). it may look nice. it may offer some funny spec mixes. but 95% of all players will click what some theorycraft homepage will tell em.

so, in the end, wether all the hunter stuff, nor the lowcost rogue stuff, will matter much.

Yes, but maybe you are missing the point.
Everyone's well aware that there will be an optimal build for most situations. Accordingly, that is not the goal of the system and nobody ever said as much.
It'll mostly be a great thing for people leveling a character and for those new to the game.

Additionally, this system is a deliberate step away from borrowed power by incorporating all the fun gameplay into the class itself. Not only that but the greater emphasis on the gameplay can be seen (and felt if you check out the PTR/Beta), we've got many abilities to play with.

[Buffbringer]

let’s be honest here: it’s a giant waste of of time.

the only reason for that talent stuff is to create marketing, interests and some strong looking feature (because DF has a rather short feature list), as well as some reason for small informical blue posts. you can shove a few talents around and with low amounts of investment easily look like „they are doing something“.

the reason why i say this: it’s all a giant waste of time. cause 4 weeks after DF release there will be guides out there, telling 95% of the player base what exactly to click in talent trees. the dream of „there is no cookie cutter build“ is just a dream. because of 2 reasons:

1) even when builds differ by 1% all ppls choose the one that is 1% better.
2) there is no 1% difference, because Blizzard is shit AF when it comes down to balancing.

heck, they can’t even balance 36 specs against each other. and now ppl think they can balance a spec inside itself, against different talent trees? that’s just naive AF. but even if Blizz could, there will always be a difference, even it is 0,001%. and most ppl still will take the 0,001% better build.

so, all in all, in the end it’s a giant waste of time and just there for looking good. and because Blizz has no better ideas (besides player progression systems, players have really enough of, after Legion, BfA and SL). it may look nice. it may offer some funny spec mixes. but 95% of all players will click what some theorycraft homepage will tell em.

so, in the end, wether all the hunter stuff, nor the lowcost rogue stuff, will matter much.

Couldn't disagree more. We know, no matter the system, there will always be an optimal route that most people will follow. It was like that with the old talents, the new ones (mop+), azerite armor (and every system in bfa), covenants, etc.

The thing here you're missing is CHOICE. Players can finally play a class differently, even if it's not the best, performance wise. I remember playing shockadin spec in TBC because it was so much fun. It wasnt the best neither in PvP nor in pve, but it was hella fun for bgs and world content. I miss that a lot.

Now, i didn't play beta or ptr yet to check if these hybrid, fun builds will be possible, but there sure are a lot of options for players now.

[Clawsout]

The hype for this xpac is just class design they havent shown anything exciting

[cozzri]

let’s be honest here: it’s a giant waste of of time.

the only reason for that talent stuff is to create marketing, interests and some strong looking feature (because DF has a rather short feature list), as well as some reason for small informical blue posts. you can shove a few talents around and with low amounts of investment easily look like „they are doing something“.

the reason why i say this: it’s all a giant waste of time. cause 4 weeks after DF release there will be guides out there, telling 95% of the player base what exactly to click in talent trees. the dream of „there is no cookie cutter build“ is just a dream

I still think the talent system was brought back to dupe classic players into buying the expanaion

"Look we brought back that RPG thing you liked!"

When in reality, the gameplay experience and community many classic players seek hasn't been fostered in retail for well over a decade. The game is numbers driven to the point of apathy.

[Niwes]

Yes, but maybe you are missing the point.
Everyone's well aware that there will be an optimal build for most situations. Accordingly, that is not the goal of the system and nobody ever said as much.
It'll mostly be a great thing for people leveling a character and for those new to the game.

Additionally, this system is a deliberate step away from borrowed power by incorporating all the fun gameplay into the class itself. Not only that but the greater emphasis on the gameplay can be seen (and felt if you check out the PTR/Beta), we've got many abilities to play with.

1) who says this besides you?
2) you know the opinion of Everybody? wow. at least this is your opening statement.
3)
imo most ppls that played this game longer than 5 or 10 years don’t level characters. they own all 12 classes at max level. since years. at least i do and everbody i know in the game.
4)
which new players? for that, Blizz is maybe 5-10 years too late. this game, at this point, imo, solely belongs to niche ppls and die hard fans. which 16 year old kid in 2022 starts playing a 17 years old game? naaah, that’s just BS imo. ofc there are maybe 5-10% new players (at best) playing the game for 2-3 months after a new xpac and that’s it. it’s the same amount of wasted time, to cater to them, imo.

all in all everything i read in your post is in my eyes complete BS (no offense, i just have some totally different opinion here) and not belongs to reality. but that’s just my opinion.

- - - Updated - - -

I still think the talent system was brought back to dupe classic players into buying the expanaion

"Look we brought back that RPG thing you liked!"

When in reality, the gameplay experience and community many classic players seek hasn't been fostered in retail for well over a decade. The game is numbers driven to the point of apathy.

this sounds more realistic. imo the whole „new talent trees“ is just a cheap replacement for nonexisting features in DF and foremost it just exists out of marketing reasons (i.e. for stuff like you mentioned and other stuff, like „Blizzard is doing something“, on a cost effective base).

- - - Updated - - -

Couldn't disagree more. We know, no matter the system, there will always be an optimal route that most people will follow. It was like that with the old talents, the new ones (mop+), azerite armor (and every system in bfa), covenants, etc.

The thing here you're missing is CHOICE. Players can finally play a class differently, even if it's not the best, performance wise. I remember playing shockadin spec in TBC because it was so much fun. It wasnt the best neither in PvP nor in pve, but it was hella fun for bgs and world content. I miss that a lot.

Now, i didn't play beta or ptr yet to check if these hybrid, fun builds will be possible, but there sure are a lot of options for players now.

yeah, this is a nice dream, that maybe 2-5% of the playerbase live. the other 95% will spec how wowhead or icyveins (or any other post-theorycrafting guide) tell them. yes, there will be funny mixed specs. yes, there will be stuff like a Shockadin or some funny Warlock or Druid mixed specs, like in the „good old days“. but imo this targets maybe 2-5% of all players, not going „max dps“ spec, just for fun. for the rest 95% playerbase it’s just a waste of time. imo.

and tbh, i played beta yesterday (got my key 3 days ago, like every xpac since WoD, because i play 17 years without sub interruption). the 4 classes i tested are such far away from any final round of number tuning/balancing, it doesnt matter at all at the moment (ofc).

i mean: you will really tell me, Blizz can’t balance 36 specs against each other, for decades, but now magically even balance the specs inside their own tree? no. fukin. way. so, yes, you get your Shockadin. and yes, that Shockadin will do 15% less damage and nobody cares (besides some crazy 2% players).

[Yakut]

Beast mastery feels completely underwhelming at level 70 in the beta. Still waiting for some decent AOE abilities and what is up with the stupid owl?????You keep changing things and nothing is better

Actually, there's a lot of aoe options, the trick is to know which ones to take and which to avoid. I have no issues with aoe as beast master at level 70 on the M+/Raid beta realm. Most of the damage is beast cleave, as expected. Followed by kill cleave. I've even been toying with explosive shot (in the class tree). Surprisingly it is doing a decent job (it's one button every 30 seconds, so it's not a big deal to throw in).

You should take a hard look at Death Chakram. Yeah, it's crap compared to Wild Spirits or Resonating arrow in SL, but it does help your damage.

My concern is more single target. Looks like the fixes mentioned in this coming week's beta should address both single target and aoe (animal companion affects both).

All that said, DHs and Ret paladins are broken (as in over the top vs literally everyone else, so a nerf is in their future by a lot) on beta. It's hard to gauge damage when two classes do literally 2-3x more than every other class and spec.

[Lodravel]

1) who says this besides you?
2) you know the opinion of Everybody? wow. at least this is your opening statement.
3)
imo most ppls that played this game longer than 5 or 10 years don’t level characters. they own all 12 classes at max level. since years. at least i do and everbody i know in the game.
4)
which new players? for that, Blizz is maybe 5-10 years too late. this game, at this point, imo, solely belongs to niche ppls and die hard fans. which 16 year old kid in 2022 starts playing a 17 years old game? naaah, that’s just BS imo. ofc there are maybe 5-10% new players (at best) playing the game for 2-3 months after a new xpac and that’s it. it’s the same amount of wasted time, to cater to them, imo.

all in all everything i read in your post is in my eyes complete BS (no offense, i just have some totally different opinion here) and not belongs to reality. but that’s just my opinion.

That is not my opening statement. Maybe I wasn't clear enough but again, from your response it's clear elaborating would do more harm.