The change that will make me quit

[Murlocbait]

Look, it's really not that hard. The blue post tried to explain their philosophy: They don't want people changing talents/skills/specs between every fight. That was never the way they intended the game to go.

And fair enough, the devs are responsible for letting it go that way, but it seems to me that this was actually an unintended consequence of something else they were trying to achieve - namely allowing people to easily switch specs (eg tanking/dps) rather than constantly tuning talent choices. At some point they did lose the plot and now they see that it's problem and are trying to fix it, but some players seem to think that the way it landed up is what it should have been all along.

No offense, but that's bullshit. The devs have apparently changed their mind on this issue - or they are talking out their asses - because they clearly said in the past that it was the express purpose of modern talent design for us to change our talents frequently. It is the entire driving force behind the shift from Cata to MoP talents - from trees that you were stuck going down to unlock what you really wanted, to tiers that allowed for experimentation and creative combinations. They 100% designed the current talent system to encourage players to try out new things between wipes or from one boss to the next - it is, in fact, the whole cornerstone of the design. MoP introduced it, WoD clearly pushed the design further in that direction, and Legion even more so - with talents spread out in a way that makes it all but mandatory if you have any desire to play even decently as a DPS warrior.

Thanks for this. These were words I was looking for and couldn't quite articulate. Especially:

Quite welcome.

[jettzypher]

Changing to the current system doesn't inherently mean they expected everyone to change after every single pull or before every boss. I switched talents way, way fewer times with the tree system, just because of how inconvenient it was. So the newer version has always been more open (which was the goal). Ever since they switched, though, there has always been some form of requirement in order to swap what you had selected. Is this new feature unnecessary, sure? They should have just went back to the old vendor-bought resource to do so. But this doesn't deserve the attention it's getting.

However, it should not exist as it did prior to the update last week where you could just switch willy nilly without any recourse or requirement. If they would have made the decision to carry forward with that design, they may as well just scrap the talents all together and either give everyone those tools and/or bake the talents (or a portion of) into existing abilities, then get rid of the stuff that no one ever uses.

[hollafame]

However, it should not exist as it did prior to the update last week where you could just switch willy nilly without any recourse or requirement. If they would have made the decision to carry forward with that design, they may as well just scrap the talents all together and either give everyone those tools and/or bake the talents (or a portion of) into existing abilities, then get rid of the stuff that no one ever uses.

Hah, said that a long time ago. This current talent system is garbage. There is no choice. There is only swapping to get peak performance. That's all it is at this point. Inconvenience.

[Sethanor]

Changing to the current system doesn't inherently mean they expected everyone to change after every single pull or before every boss.

yes they did... even said so back when the system was introduced (said so multiple times as far as i can remember, during MoP beta, MoP AND WoD Alpha/Beta)
The whole system is DESIGNED around you making adjustements on the fly for the situation youre facing.

I switched talents way, way fewer times with the tree system, just because of how inconvenient it was.

thats cause the old system was a "set and forget" design. you had ONE build that was optimal and any slight change wouldnt have made any difference that would justify a change...
with the current system you cant just yolo your way through a whole raid using just "Dragonroar+Bladestorm+Ravager" cause your single-target dps would be shit.

However, it should not exist as it did prior to the update last week where you could just switch willy nilly without any recourse or requirement. If they would have made the decision to carry forward with that design, they may as well just scrap the talents all together and either give everyone those tools and/or bake the talents (or a portion of) into existing abilities, then get rid of the stuff that no one ever uses.

i agree with the part of removing the new system... the current design makes no sense and most of the talents should be baseline (its obvious when they strip current baseline stuff and shove it into the talent tree...)
its a problem we had for quite some time, allthough going back to the old trees wouldnt make it any better.
they should keep the layout of the current system but dont put active abilities in the talents, just "modifiers" for your abilities.
then make 3 modifiers for lets say 5 of your abilities so you can chose for example on the bladestorm tier: (just some random ideas)
- bladestorms range is increased by x yards
- bladestorm now gives you x% parry
- if your bladestorm hits 3+ targets for the entire duration you gain buff y for z seconds after bladestorm ends

it seems more boring, but that way the spec would work without talents, but you still can modify your abilities to enhance certain playstyles.
the modifiers just need to be MINOR gameplay adjustements, not huge dps-gains like current active ability talents are, THEN they can go ahead and restrict a respec, but NOT with the current design.

[caervek]

They don't want people changing talents/skills/specs between every fight. That was never the way they intended the game to go.

Yes it was, they said so when WoD came out, and the talent design has progressed even more in that direction in Legion (single target talents share tiers with AoE talents, burts DPS talents share tiers with sustained DPS talents, etc).

[hollafame]

Mm I thought there was a ghostcrawler interview when MoP first introduced this system that it's purpose was so you actually had to make a choice that wasn't ruled by theory crafting. I think they were ok with some being situational but I don't think it was the intended direction.

[Murlocbait]

Mm I thought there was a ghostcrawler interview when MoP first introduced this system that it's purpose was so you actually had to make a choice that wasn't ruled by theory crafting. I think they were ok with some being situational but I don't think it was the intended direction.

But in MoP, the tiers were far better arranged by function - you had an AoE tier, a single-target tier, a mobility tier, etc. They crapped all over that quite a bit in WoD (for some classes more than others *cough*warriors*cough*). In Legion, they seem to be doubling down on that design, spreading those talents around willy nilly so that you are basically forced into choosing what is best in each instance. If it went back to MoP style, with tiers clearly dedicated to specific functions, then it might be ok to limit swapping them - as long as they were at least reasonably balanced within a close degree of each other. The highest level Mythic players might still change for that 2% better damage, but most of us wouldn't need to because our ability to play would matter far more than such a minor difference.

Legion's talent tier design not only encourages frequent swapping, but essentially makes it mandatory if you want to play well. Not swapping between fights means you are seriously hampering your performance, and the rest of your party/raid is going to suffer for it. How they can then feel that it makes sense to make swapping talents more of a pain in the ass is just mind-bottling and illustrates how much they seem to not understand their own fucking game systems.

[hollafame]

But in MoP, the tiers were far better arranged by function - you had an AoE tier, a single-target tier, a mobility tier, etc. They crapped all over that quite a bit in WoD (for some classes more than others *cough*warriors*cough*). In Legion, they seem to be doubling down on that design, spreading those talents around willy nilly so that you are basically forced into choosing what is best in each instance. If it went back to MoP style, with tiers clearly dedicated to specific functions, then it might be ok to limit swapping them - as long as they were at least reasonably balanced within a close degree of each other. The highest level Mythic players might still change for that 2% better damage, but most of us wouldn't need to because our ability to play would matter far more than such a minor difference.

Legion's talent tier design not only encourages frequent swapping, but essentially makes it mandatory if you want to play well. Not swapping between fights means you are seriously hampering your performance, and the rest of your party/raid is going to suffer for it. How they can then feel that it makes sense to make swapping talents more of a pain in the ass is just mind-bottling and illustrates how much they seem to not understand their own fucking game systems.

Not sure I'd say "better" but yeah -- and I think ultimately it was a failure because even when you had thematic tiers (regardless of how balanced) there was always a preferred option. Maybe on a smaller scale of what Legion is offering but it was still there. It seems as though they've given up on their original intent and decided that instead of having similar abilities compete with each other and play the buff/nerf game, they'd have them swapped based on mechanics so everything can be used in one situation or another.

[Murlocbait]

Not sure I'd say "better" but yeah -- and I think ultimately it was a failure because even when you had thematic tiers (regardless of how balanced) there was always a preferred option. Maybe on a smaller scale of what Legion is offering but it was still there. It seems as though they've given up on their original intent and decided that instead of having similar abilities compete with each other and play the buff/nerf game, they'd have them swapped based on mechanics so everything can be used in one situation or another.

Well, to me they were better because it did create some element of choice. Sure, there is always a mathematically superior option, but in MoP i felt like the differences were truly minimal (in most cases). I really felt like MoP let me pick the talents I wanted to and just play. While one might be 3% better on paper than another, I'm not such an amazing player that such differences would actually matter - my own fuck ups would create much more difference than picking Dragon Roar instead of Bladestorm ever would.

I would be ok with the new design if they eliminated all hurdles to swapping talents. If we're supposed to experiment and use different talents in different situations, then make it easy to swap. No reagent (NONE), and the ability to set up pre-built talent layouts that we can swap between via hotkey while out of combat. Reagents and cooldowns, etc. serve no purpose in the game they seem to want to make, yet they keep these things there just to make the whole system more bloated and obnoxious.

[Coffeh]

This about sums it up, and the crazy thing is changing talents for each fight is going to be even more mandatory in Legion as most tiers make you pick between ST/Aoe/cleave or Burst/sustain. They are making it harder to change talents than in WoD yet more required, and they are bringing this in to replace the system LEgion already had which was much better, EPIC FAIL.

You hear that? Listen close. I can actually hear Blizzard raking in the $$$$$ from players having to buy and sell tokens to pay for this. Fail? I think not. Brilliant business.

[Petezaparty]

Not sure how I feel about this at all. I like the idea that scribes will be able to drop something allowing changing on the fly. Brings the sense of this is not a SOLO game. But than again its rather odd.

[Chain Chungus]

I hate the idea of changing talents repeatedly through a single instance run to maximize everything. If you are forced to use every talent, then they aren't really a choice at all. What is the difference between a talent and simply adding those as extra abilities with long cooldowns? Not much, I'd argue.

Talents should be something you use for a long period of time until you feel like changing it for RPG reasons, not because it is the "best" for a certain situation. It should be difficult, but not impossible, to change them. There should never be a "best in tier" talent either, all three should be equal and the choice between them personal.

[Warriorsarri]

That's good and dandy in theory, but in practice no mater how they lay the talents out, if there is a power to be gained one talent will always be the optimal choice in a given scenario. Only real choice is if the choice at hand has no real impact on your ability to perform. If all the available choices has an impact then there's no real choice, just the right and the wrong one.

[jn27]

Gonna be great when one guy realizes he ought to swap a talent, but nobody else needs to.

Drop the gold for one person, or continue without the talent. Creates a really negative situation, both options are unappealing.

Not looking forward to this at all.