A Fun Look to the Past - Old Blue Posts about Talent Tree Evolution

[roboscorcher]

Maybe this way we can stop this mentality that Raiding and 3x3 arena are the ultimate form of content and therefore the entire talent system must be...what we have today.

This is EXACTLY why the trees were scrapped. WoW players demand perfect builds in group content.

When I first hit 80 in Wrath and did dungeons, I was ridiculed (and I think even kicked) for not having "the" build. One or two talents were off, so I was "bad". In contrast, I can play Diablo3 solo or with a friend and spend my paragon points however I want. If my build sucked, that was up to me to decide, and the UI made it easy to fix.

Talent trees should never return. Rather, I would like to see a paragon points system added to complement the talent rows. It makes way more sense to keep the abilities separate from the stat buffs, especially when respeccing.

[LionSinMaikeru]

Of course, but due the way Windrush works, that doesn't make much sense.
To draw proper comparison on live, imagine if Bloodlust / Time Warp would be a talent, how fun is that?

I mean that depends. It would be a necessity for raiding, but it might not be a necessity for casual / solo play.

Sure, but then that's an open invitation for class stacking, unless the damage increase is on a <1% level.
Which is a nightmare to balance, they tried that Stormlash, it didn't exactly work out.

Then they could make a new talent to take its place.

Kinda an "archaic" take on the resource system, not really compareable with the modern system.

But that wasn't your specification. You still had to monitor your soulshards and made sure you had enough to do everything you needed to do. As someone who has played Warlock since Vanilla, I much prefer the old system to the new system. Or maybe how things were in MoP to today.

Ever tried playing Balance and "not caring" about Astral Power?
Like seriously, this response is just golden.

Yet again, you're taking what I'm saying out of context. I don't know if you are being purposely misleading or just didn't understand what I was trying to convey. I'm saying I don't care about Astral Power in the sense that if it was there or wasn't - I wouldn't care. It's pretty much all the same to me. Is it necessary and something that you have to care about when playing Druid today - absolutely. Would I care if they removed it? Not at all.

Pretty much the only proc in the Vanilla era.

Not true? Nightfall, clearcasting from multiple classes, Nature's Grace, Aspect of the Hawk, Impact stun, Illumination Proc, Inspiration type procs, etc.
Did you play Vanilla? Serious question.

And i didn't, who's right now?
Decent talents were figured out quite quickly, stat variation wasn't much of a thing back then.

If you didn't, that was your choice. But the option was there. The same applies today, mind you. Except I no longer have the option to do any theorycrafting.

Yes, and the major difference is that for a lot caster specs, the entire rotation consisted out of said filler spell.
The world "filler" in itself already implies that you also press other buttons and only press that button inbetween, hence the name "filler spell".

Your "filler" were your "rotation".

Not true. There were always other abilities to use - especially if you were into a hybrid build.

And you can't do that on live?

Nope. Because they limit the spells I have based on my spec.

On live, my Frost Mage is locked out of the Fire and Arcane spellbook section. Upon selecting Frost, my Mage cannot use Fireball, Fireblast, Pyroblast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, etc.

My Frost Mage on live has like 30% of the abilities my Mage does in Classic. That is a problem.

I mean, if you don't care that much about performance, which you probably don't if you suddeny want to spam Frostbolts despite having lots of points in Fire, you can basically choose any talent you want.

If you're going to be condescending , we don't need to have this conversation.

But the "choices" matter very little - as I've detailed above.

Which is, by the way, not a flaw of the system, but a flaw of its execution, which is a difference.

How do they matter? If you can pick whatever you want and succeed in a competitive environment how is that mattering?

The thing was just, if you cared about durability, you can just go even further into Frost and deal more damage.
This is the point where i struggle to find objective reasons beyond "because i can".

What if you wanted to do decent damage and have a little bit of durability? Or have a decent amount of durability + a little bit of damage?

If you cannot see the difference, I don't know what to tell you.

I'm giving you a lot more than just "because I can" and you seem to be ignoring it all.

If you want to level and go all out damage, Fire may be your spec, if you want durability, Frost is the choice.

By the time you picked up all those "durability talents" from Frost, you're already so invested into Frost that actually powerful talents outside of Imp. Fireball are already out of your reach in Fire (or you just get them once you're like 50+), while good Frost talents lie at your feet.

Not true at all.

On a Classic Mage, if you go down into Frost you can get: Improved Frostbolt (quicker cast), Frostbite (15% chance for your frost spells to freeze the target in place), and Improved Frost Nova (reduced cooldown) all of which help you survive better than a Mage who doesn't have those talents.

That's litterally only investing TEN points into Frost, freeing you to put the other 41 into Fire if you want pure DPS or putting more into Frost for more survivability. How are you not understanding this?

This is the big problem of those talent trees, they rewarded you for putting more points into a single tree.

How is that a problem? You're rewarded for your investment. This is an RPG and it makes perfect sense that someone investing more energy into a specific tree would do better than someone who is splitting their attention. Jack of all trades, master of none, etc.

The problem here is that, unless you talented your way further into Affliction, your Drain Life did like 10% more damage, without any further talent(s) supporting that, those 10% aren't improving your durability by that much.
And if you've taken Shadow Mastery, well, you're not really playing a hybrid spec anymore.

Again, not true.

If you go into Affliction and put points into Suppression (10% reduced chance for enemies to resist your affliction spells), 5 into Improved Drain Life (+10% health drained), and 5 into Fel Concentration (70% chance to avoid interruption) that is already making your survivability more effective than a Warlock without those talents. And that, again, is only investing a small amount of talent points. Leaving you 34 to do whatever you want. Do you want more survivability? More damage? More control?

And what has basically become the focus of WoW since TBC?
Yes, the endgame, primarily dungeons & raids.

You'd have a point if most people actually got to endgame. The % of people who completed endgame raids like Naxx and Sunwell was very small. Most people just messed around and were casual, or leveled alts, did PvP, etc.

I've said in my first / second post in this thread, the old talent trees were quite decent for leveling, they were cool as you slowly progressed your character.
But as WoW has moved (rather early its lifespan in hindsight) towards a game focused on the endgame, those talent trees became very clunky and not flexible for a lot of classes / spec.

They were plenty flexible if you weren't going for progression.

The irony about Vanilla arcane is that there was not a single talent in there that improved the damage of your Arcane Missiles.

In other words, Arcane was generally regarded as tree to dump points into after you're done with Frost / Fire.

Which again, was the fault of Blizzard not balancing things properly, not the fault of the system.

The same is essentially true today - so I'm not surprised.

[Selah]

I didn't swap, at best i pointed out that thinking that just because talent variation exists, doesn't mean it's customization, let alone good one.

And if you consider Titans Grip "customization" then literally anything is customization, which i heavily disagree with because it's extremely misleading.
Costumization within a gaming setting should apply some sort of viability.

Not taking Titans Grip just gimped your character in every way possible.

You've just done it right here in these last two lines. You say you're talking about viability, which choosing to not take Titan's Grip was viable but then in order to try to shoot it down you talk about it not being optimal. Which is something we both agreed wasn't the most optimal.

Choosing to wield a single 2h weapon or dual-wielding 1h weapons isn't just customization but a core part of character fantasy. There's a reason why Monks were 2h staff DPS spec for a while.

Beyond that though, I've given the standard at which I'm working with already, I don't know what else to say in that regard.

And that just never existed.

To stick with the Icefury example:

First off, Icefury needs to be buried deep down in Elemental, if it's in like Tier 3-5, it's unavoidable for obvious reasons.

Does it really though? Would it be such a horrible thing if Enhancement or Resto could grab it? If they opted out for dumping all their points into a tree to pick up the talent and few others from Ele... would it truly be that game breaking? Resto wouldn't be able to do anything that spectacular with it and Enhancement would only ever have a few niche moments where they could really capitalize on it.

I do understand what you're saying here, but your scenario is doing the exact same thing Blizzard does when people slap them with the "fun police" title. We are sacrificing everything potentially fun and interesting on this altar of balance because some cutting edge raider is going to find a weird way to use it in one or two fights every other expansion.

Second, you then need another set of talentS to put my talentpoints into that give me some sort of reasonable compensation for not taking Icefury.
If my other two specs are a Melee and a Resto Tree, those options are not going to exist, because those talents are obviously tailored towards a Melee / Healer role.

They may have like some useful talents, but that's it.

True, their talents are going to be skewed a specific way. That's what makes class building fun. Why do we even need to compensate for Ice Fury in this scenario anyways when it's set up to be as an alternative play style?

Again though, you'll be picking up other abilities from trees. Maybe you dip a bit into resto and have a bit of clutch healing you can do, maybe you go into enhance and find yourself a bit more sturdy. The trade off for not getting said talent is you get to draw more from the strengths of other specs. Those strengths sometimes greatly compliment the spec you're playing, sometimes they don't.

It also can barely work due how the talent system operated, one point into a core ability held way more value than into some reduced mana cost talent, therefore, unless my tree was filled with barely useful talents, i'm not just skipping over a single talent that holds (by comparison to other talents) massive value.

This statement greatly depends one what period of time you were playing. If you're in vanilla, the reduction to the costs of your spells and the increased cast speeds were like gold. Wrath was a different story.

That said, if the talent in question serves you little purpose in PvE but is great in PvP and you are a raider, you're going to skip it. People didn't just pick a talent set and stick with it all the time, there's a reason why respeccing costs were always a point of conversation.

And was this talent even compareable with Divine storm? It wasn't.
Really, if you so deepset onto this "I can do things differently for the sake of doing it", then i'm quite frankly at a loss as.

DS is an AoE ability. If you're doing a tank and spank like Patchwerk, that talent is useless and anything that would buff your seals, reduce your mana costs, give you a bonus to STR or INT all would be better choices.

At a certain point, one needs to draw line where accomodating a certain people holds the game back.
If someone seriously considers playing Ret paladin but enjoys the freedom of not taking Crusader strike / Divine storm, you have to ask yourself whether that's good thing.

Yes, it is a good thing that doesn't hold the game back. Instead it encourages players to learn how their classes work and what makes them tick. Also, more importantly, it teaches them their weaknesses. Let the player run that build without CS/DS and see what works, they'll either find a reasonable alternative or they'll completely fail and do something else. We don't need to hand-hold every single player in the game every single time. Let people figure out what works and what doesn't.

I fully agree, that's why it is good to have a talent system that accommodates this.

Do you like Talent X? No, then don't take, take an alternative and you'll still be doing reasonably well.
Do you want a bit more complex stuff? Take Talent Y.

and, at the end of the day, there will always be a cookie cutter build that you have to run if you're doing content at the top end.

I think you've noticed the lengths of these posts by now, sorry that i cannot discuss literally every single example in great detail, especially if its essentially always the same thing except for a different class.

More to my point, the crux of your argument against them is something along the lines of the fact they weren't the most optimal. It wasn't that they weren't viable or didn't have niches where they worked, you just didn't accept them or there was a build that did more output. To reject these builds so much and then to ask for me to give them to you when you've already been supplied with them by multiple sources is strange.

Which is by no means a slippery slope, right?
Because they may be wrong on X, doesn't mean it also applies to Y.

The likelihood of them digging their heels in on this subject is high though. Especially considering it has been something that is regularly the topic of discussion since Cata was launched. They've proven to do it with shorter running subjects and less impacting systems, it's not unreasonable to be suspicious that they would do it again.

I can only speak for myself, but for me, beyond the leveling phase, the talent trees are not a thing that i liked about classic.

Each to their own, but making broad statement why people will people classic (or not) is an extremely speculative discussion, especially where "It's just something different" is also an option.

I'm not entirely sure what's going on with this bit here. I thought we were talking about how easy (or not) it'll be to work on the trees... not so much who will be playing classic. Sorry about that.

I doubt GC's salary was ever dependant on how the community views him.
You may accuse the devs using political speech, which is a legit criticism, but the massive difference between politicians and game developers is the fact that the devs do not have to win an election where the playerbase can vote.

This is a fundamental error of your analogy, the people that give GC a job are not the benefactors of this statement.

Fact is, i doubt the higher ups at game companies even care whether developers interact with the playerbase, outside of (pre) scheduled PR stuff.

You don't think public opinion of someone won't influence their employment status within a private company? Look at how many people openly loathe Ion, if it became a bad enough of a situation, you don't think the company wouldn't do something about that?

I'd argue the people in these types of jobs are more vulnerable to the rule of the mob than politicians as far as employment status goes. If players began to boycott WoW because Ion was still in charge and they started to see a sharp decline in their income, I have a strong suspicion he would be moved to a different part of a company. Instead of voting, players vote with their wallets.

They started to look at the issue again in 2016 (A.k.a. Nostalrius drama) and had a single dev, Omar Gonzalez, working on it, who basically developed a Proof of concept within a few weeks, that it is in fact doable to run some alternate version of the 1.12 data on the 7.0 WoW version.

To put simply, it was one guy who enabled Vanilla from a technical side, at least that's what i've got out of interviews, with Omar also hosting the Classic Panel, that is most likely not too far from the truth.

Then they hired a team and started to invest into the product. It's a tale as old as time.

[Alkizon]

Oh... it's here again. Really, I'm just... whom I fooling of here, still nobody reads that

3. Classes philosophies+ (&thier coherence with whole design+supports/balance problems) +(+/+/+/+/+/+)+/+(+)+
4. Some words about talents (&their connection with classes, items=talents) +(+)+(+/+/+/+)

People are poking their noses in partial details again when it's necessary to talk about system as a whole.
*leaving on stumble legs and kicking stuff around*

[Kralljin]

I mean that depends. It would be a necessity for raiding, but it might not be a necessity for casual / solo play.

The point is, is it something that is a "good" talent?
You'd basically have to play if you're the only one, which is reasonable, but as soon as there is a second one, one has to take the bullet for the team, the other one doesn't have to.

Then they could make a new talent to take its place.

First you suggest that they should balance it, then you say, "fuck that, remove it".

But that wasn't your specification.

The old Soulshard system was much as a resource system as ammunition was for hunters.

Do i really have to disclaim that there is a difference between ammunition and something such as Energy / Rage / Astral Power / Maelstrom?

Would I care if they removed it? Not at all.

At this point i'm not even sure you try to understand my post, rather look for some other meaning in it.

By "care" i mean, is it something you have to monitor and play around (and by that, i mean more than just checking your bags whether you still had some left) i didn't ask what you think off Astral power or whether you like it.
And there is a major difference between the current present in a lot of specs and Vanilla Soul shards.

Not true? Nightfall, clearcasting from multiple classes, Nature's Grace, Aspect of the Hawk, Impact stun, Illumination Proc, Inspiration type procs, etc.
Did you play Vanilla? Serious question.

You seriously cannot tell the difference between those procs and Nightfall?

If you didn't, that was your choice. But the option was there. The same applies today, mind you. Except I no longer have the option to do any theorycrafting.

The first sentence contradicts the latter.

First you say, the option is there, then you say you don't have the option anymore.

My Frost Mage on live has like 30% of the abilities my Mage does in Classic. That is a problem.

And i simply argue that basically those basic abilities such as Fireball and Arcane missiles did not matter to a Frost mage, because due to the talents, Frostbolt was superior in every situation.

If you're going to be condescending , we don't need to have this conversation.

Sorry, but at this point, i can only sum up your stance with "I have the right to be unreasonable".

But the "choices" matter very little - as I've detailed above.

Again, that's your opinion.
Another poster already explained that Frost mage has different playstyles, you just turn "i don't want that", if that's your choice, then that's also your problem.

How do they matter? If you can pick whatever you want and succeed in a competitive environment how is that mattering?

This is just such a weird juxtaposition of an argument, is it really a bad thing that all talents are competitive given a certain situation?

It's not like that a random build does similiar dps as the "best one", especially because most talents have different strengths and weaknesses.
If someone wants to play Glacial storm over Splitting ice, that's their choice, but then they also do less damage on in a two target situation.

You have choice, you can augment your character given a situation, or just play the talents that you like, unless those talents happen to the best one for a given situation, you will see a difference.

What if you wanted to do decent damage and have a little bit of durability? Or have a decent amount of durability + a little bit of damage?

...you just play Frost?

Like, Frost Mage tree has tons of beneficial dps talents, it's not like "Fire = damage ; Frost = defense".

If you already chosen talents that improves your frostbolt, but then to also decide to improve your Fireball, you will not see an actual damage gain until your Fireball surpasses Frostbolt in terms of damage.

Once that happens, all Frostbolt has left is the slow, where an already decent version could just be applied by the baseline version.

You're just biting your own tail, if you improve Frostbolt, spamming Frostbolt is the most effective way to deal damage, if you improve Fireball, spamming Fireball is the most effective way to deal damage.

If you improve both, you are not reaping the full benefit of your talentpoints and are weaker than someone who, for example, went deep Frost.
Because their Frostbolt is much stronger than yours and Fireball requires deep fire talentpoints in order to be competitive with a Frostbolt that has all the improvements from Frost.

Improving both abilities at the same time is anti-synergistic, therefore bound to end up being inferior.

I'm giving you a lot more than just "because I can" and you seem to be ignoring it all.

The problem is that this is still your only argument, once you further analyze the matter, as seen above.

On a Classic Mage, if you go down into Frost you can get: Improved Frostbolt (quicker cast), Frostbite (15% chance for your frost spells to freeze the target in place), and Improved Frost Nova (reduced cooldown) all of which help you survive better than a Mage who doesn't have those talents.

That's litterally only investing TEN points into Frost, freeing you to put the other 41 into Fire if you want pure DPS or putting more into Frost for more survivability. How are you not understanding this?

And 1/5 of your talentspoints are gone at this point, any Fire talent is basically delayed by 10 levels compared to someone who went Fire right off the bat.
Meanwhile, you still haven't picked up Elemental precision, or Chillblains (talents you earlier mentioned).

Whereas in Frost, talents like Piercing Ice are already available, if you also selected Chillblains / Elemental precision, you have access to Shatter as well.

Meanwhile, you try to bring your Fireball up to speed while the damage of a deep Frost mage keeps improving with each level.

This is the big error in your logic, improving Fireball is only beneficial if you choose to use Fireball despite Frostbolt, due to its improvements, being already superior.

Jack of all trades, master of none, etc.

Going by your statements above, you've yet to understand how synergy between talents affects actual performance.

And the idea of Jack of all trades fell pretty much through as WoW moved onto an endgame focused system, you're a Healer, Tank or Dps, as this is simply to focus on a chosen role within a group.

Paladins were supposed to be "Jack of all trades" in Classic WoW, the (classic) devs, as far as i know, flat out admitted that it didn't work out how they envisioned it.

And regarding Pure classes, unless some hybrid build turns out to do deep spec, getting fully invested into one spec is more beneficial than splitting up.
Example, TBC Destro Lock went 21 into Demo, but sacrificied its succus for 15% shadow damage and then spammed Shadowbolt, not much "demo" stuff involved.

Leaving you 34 to do whatever you want. Do you want more survivability? More damage? More control?

Considering i'm lvl 30 at this point already and still haven't picked up talents like Imp. Soul tap or Imp. Drain Soul and won't pick up any decent talents in Demo until i hit ~45, Destro talents also not really synergizing with my previous choices, more Affliction talents it is.

You'd have a point if most people actually got to endgame. The % of people who completed endgame raids like Naxx and Sunwell was very small. Most people just messed around and were casual, or leveled alts, did PvP, etc.

By "Endgame" i meant, basically maxlevel content, leveling lost relevance, maxlevel group based content became the focus, not just the "currently highest tier".

They were plenty flexible if you weren't going for progression.

In my opinion, the type of customization you describe falls under "I want to do things differently for the sake of doing it differently", in other words "because i can".

The same is essentially true today - so I'm not surprised.

Last time i checked, arcane actually had its own arcane focused talent tree and not some generalized "Caster improving" talents.

There's a reason why Monks were 2h staff DPS spec for a while.

Of course, but you ignore that Monk had talents to allow both dual wielding and two handed weapons being competitive.
Wotlk Fury did not have this talent, you took Titans grip or you sucked.

Second, that solely worked because this "choice" worked because it was influenced by something outside the talent - you couldn't wield both two handed and one handed weapons at the same time as Monk.

Beyond that though, I've given the standard at which I'm working with already, I don't know what else to say in that regard.

Which ends this discussion right off the bat for me.

If you want be different just for the heck of it, your choice, but i prefer choices that have some rationality behind it.

[Selah]

Of course, but you ignore that Monk had talents to allow both dual wielding and two handed weapons being competitive.
Wotlk Fury did not have this talent, you took Titans grip or you sucked.

Second, that solely worked because this "choice" worked because it was influenced by something outside the talent - you couldn't wield both two handed and one handed weapons at the same time as Monk.

So, I actually did a bit of research about and I'm glad I did. Monks could actually just outright wield either 2h or dual-wield at will. Instead of a talent we had Jab and it would change how it dealt damage automatically depending on which weapons you equipped. It was actually a really damn cool ability. Here's the talent calculator for you. It looks fairly accurate, if it's wrong or I find something else contradicting I'll update my post. A shame they never capitalized on this really unique feature, would have been fun to see how this would play out in other classes.

That aside, you've once again changed the standard. I've never claimed it was the best way to play your class, I said it was viable. Sure, you would be behind other fury warriors that took it but that's not the standard.

Which ends this discussion right off the bat for me.

If you want be different just for the heck of it, your choice, but i prefer choices that have some rationality behind it.

These few statements really just baffle me. If that standard is so problematic for you... why did you wait to take issue with it until now? It's been a couple of days since I said that. That seems very dishonest.

Make your claims about rationality as you want, it's hard to take such a statement from someone who outright rejected multiple sources of information for no other reason that I can see than it didn't fit into your narrative. I've also never mentioned, alluded to, suggested, or hinted that I "want to be different for the heck of it." I've made it very clear that for me it is great fun to building classes and finding niche builds. I've also given scenarios where I believe it to be beneficial for the community and the game.

If you would like the conversation to end, you could just say you're done having the conversation. It would save everyone a lot of headache.

[LionSinMaikeru]

The point is, is it something that is a "good" talent?
You'd basically have to play if you're the only one, which is reasonable, but as soon as there is a second one, one has to take the bullet for the team, the other one doesn't have to.

But if it's in a competitive environment it shouldn't matter because people are going to take what's mathematically the best.

First you suggest that they should balance it, then you say, "fuck that, remove it".

If a single talent is difficult to be balanced, it should be removed and replaced with something better. Not set fire to the whole system.

The old Soulshard system was much as a resource system as ammunition was for hunters.

Do i really have to disclaim that there is a difference between ammunition and something such as Energy / Rage / Astral Power / Maelstrom?

That isn't what you said, but okay. But I'll still stick by the fact that I preferred the old Soulshard system to the current one. Warlocks wanted Soulshards
to stack and for them to be easier to obtain. We didn't want combo points for Warlocks.

At this point i'm not even sure you try to understand my post, rather look for some other meaning in it.

By "care" i mean, is it something you have to monitor and play around (and by that, i mean more than just checking your bags whether you still had some left) i didn't ask what you think off Astral power or whether you like it.
And there is a major difference between the current present in a lot of specs and Vanilla Soul shards.

I could accuse you of the same.

You seriously cannot tell the difference between those procs and Nightfall?

They're all procs. Look up what that word means. You didn't specify "proc that triggers a free damaging spell" you said proc.

If you're going to keep moving the goal post, that's on you.

The first sentence contradicts the latter.

First you say, the option is there, then you say you don't have the option anymore.

No. The option for YOU to not theorycraft is still there since there'll always be a best talent for a situation. The option for ME to theorycraft isn't there where-as it was in Vanilla.

And i simply argue that basically those basic abilities such as Fireball and Arcane missiles did not matter to a Frost mage, because due to the talents, Frostbolt was superior in every situation.

And I've given you several examples on how that's not true or why that might not be true and you just ignore them which shows me you're just arguing just to argue.

Sorry, but at this point, i can only sum up your stance with "I have the right to be unreasonable".

You're the one being unreasonable. I've given you several examples and all you can fire back with is "well I think it's incorrect so it shouldn't be a thing!"

This is just such a weird juxtaposition of an argument, is it really a bad thing that all talents are competitive given a certain situation?

Because you said the choices matter now. How do they matter when they don't?

...you just play Frost?

Like, Frost Mage tree has tons of beneficial dps talents, it's not like "Fire = damage ; Frost = defense".

If you already chosen talents that improves your frostbolt, but then to also decide to improve your Fireball, you will not see an actual damage gain until your Fireball surpasses Frostbolt in terms of damage.

Once that happens, all Frostbolt has left is the slow, where an already decent version could just be applied by the baseline version.

You're just biting your own tail, if you improve Frostbolt, spamming Frostbolt is the most effective way to deal damage, if you improve Fireball, spamming Fireball is the most effective way to deal damage.

If you improve both, you are not reaping the full benefit of your talentpoints and are weaker than someone who, for example, went deep Frost.
Because their Frostbolt is much stronger than yours and Fireball requires deep fire talentpoints in order to be competitive with a Frostbolt that has all the improvements from Frost.

Improving both abilities at the same time is anti-synergistic, therefore bound to end up being inferior.

Again, incorrect. Frost has a lot of defensive talents. Fire has a lot of offensive. I'm aware that Frost itself has good dps, but if you wanted to be a Fire Mage and have the DoTs, stun effect, or whatever - you'll pick Fire. And if you're picking Fire, you can put some talents in Frost regardless to get some defensive options.

You cannot do that on live.

The problem is that this is still your only argument, once you further analyze the matter, as seen above.

And your "analyze" was incorrect, as seen above.

And 1/5 of your talentspoints are gone at this point, any Fire talent is basically delayed by 10 levels compared to someone who went Fire right off the bat.
Meanwhile, you still haven't picked up Elemental precision, or Chillblains (talents you earlier mentioned).

It doesn't matter if you have different talents than someone who has gone Fire right off the bat because while they have more damage, you'll have more survivability. You traded damage for survivability.

Going by your statements above, you've yet to understand how synergy between talents affects actual performance.

And the idea of Jack of all trades fell pretty much through as WoW moved onto an endgame focused system, you're a Healer, Tank or Dps, as this is simply to focus on a chosen role within a group.

Paladins were supposed to be "Jack of all trades" in Classic WoW, the (classic) devs, as far as i know, flat out admitted that it didn't work out how they envisioned it.

And regarding Pure classes, unless some hybrid build turns out to do deep spec, getting fully invested into one spec is more beneficial than splitting up.
Example, TBC Destro Lock went 21 into Demo, but sacrificied its succus for 15% shadow damage and then spammed Shadowbolt, not much "demo" stuff involved.

Yet again, you've ignored my point. We're talking about talents not classes. If a Mage goes pure Fire or pure Frost, they'll do more DPS because they've "mastered" their spec compared to someone who hasn't invested all points in. But pushing for the highest DPS isn't the end-all-be-all unless you're raiding.

Considering i'm lvl 30 at this point already and still haven't picked up talents like Imp. Soul tap or Imp. Drain Soul and won't pick up any decent talents in Demo until i hit ~45, Destro talents also not really synergizing with my previous choices, more Affliction talents it is.

What does this have to do with ANYTHING I said?

By "Endgame" i meant, basically maxlevel content, leveling lost relevance, maxlevel group based content became the focus, not just the "currently highest tier".

And again, most people really didn't do much but dabble in those things. Most people farmed for their mounts, leveled alts, and other things. And in those things the mathematically best spec did NOT matter. It was about your own playstyle.

In my opinion, the type of customization you describe falls under "I want to do things differently for the sake of doing it differently", in other words "because i can".

And in my opinion you lack imagination.

Last time i checked, arcane actually had its own arcane focused talent tree and not some generalized "Caster improving" talents.

I'm talking about Blizzard not balancing things properly.

- - - Updated - - -

These few statements really just baffle me. If that standard is so problematic for you... why did you wait to take issue with it until now? It's been a couple of days since I said that. That seems very dishonest.

Make your claims about rationality as you want, it's hard to take such a statement from someone who outright rejected multiple sources of information for no other reason that I can see than it didn't fit into your narrative. I've also never mentioned, alluded to, suggested, or hinted that I "want to be different for the heck of it." I've made it very clear that for me it is great fun to building classes and finding niche builds. I've also given scenarios where I believe it to be beneficial for the community and the game.

If you would like the conversation to end, you could just say you're done having the conversation. It would save everyone a lot of headache.

It's blatantly obvious in his mind if HE doesn't understand the choices behind someone's decisions, then he doesn't want to hear why someone did it - they shouldn't make them or they're playing incorrectly. Because his rational is the only thing that matters. :insert eyeroll here:

[Azerate]

Why even make a thread if you don't want to hear rational arguments because you believe they are objectively wrong?

Here's the reality about the old talent trees:

1. The little choice that was there was in most cases insignificant, or just downright unviable. Not "just for 3v3 and raiding", but everywhere.
2. All this "player made fun" and interesting talent choices, were made by like 5 people worldwide and put on youtube, which makes some believe more people did this, they didn't.
3. The old talent trees were confusing as hell. Unless you were extremely well versed in the game, OR knew that you had to look it up somewhere and not just pick random stuff. This was fixed to a point at later stages of the game (for example you were locked to just one tree until you reach the end), but at the beginning, there was absolutely no guideline as to how to spend your points. I can't even imagine how many people completely messed up their character and as a result probably quit the game.

So basically, there were pretty much no pros to that old system, outside of some very rare cases of some pro players picking slightly different things, and the cons were disastrous - game breaking for many players.

If you can look past your own nose, there's no way you support the old talent system.

Sadly you're right, to the detriment of the 99% of the people who play the game without esports and world firsts.

Do you think people who are picking talents in 3 trees simultaneously and wasting them on garbage are having fun? It's the other way around. Only the very knowledgeable players know how to get through the classic-style talent tree and get the most out of it. Most will just pick at random and mess up their character

[Kralljin]

These few statements really just baffle me. If that standard is so problematic for you... why did you wait to take issue with it until now? It's been a couple of days since I said that. That seems very dishonest.

I think that it just went over your head.
Because i've raised the example that, let's say not speccing into Crusader Strike despite being Ret, is not something that is "good customization" to me.

Make your claims about rationality as you want, it's hard to take such a statement from someone who outright rejected multiple sources of information for no other reason that I can see than it didn't fit into your narrative.

It has less to with rejecting, but rather keeping things down, those posts have grown big enough.

But if it's in a competitive environment it shouldn't matter because people are going to take what's mathematically the best.

That just totally dodges the point, because the current talent system is built around the idea that every talent can be decent given a certain situation.
If Bloodlust were a talent, one Shaman would have no choice but to take it, whereas the rest could spent their point otherwise.

That isn't what you said, but okay.

No, because i really believed that it goes without saying that there's a crucial difference between Ammunition and the resource system(s) we have nowadays.
It's Apples and Oranges, really.

They're all procs. Look up what that word means. You didn't specify "proc that triggers a free damaging spell" you said proc.

There's a difference between a proc that requires response from a player and a entirely passive proc.

You're looking at a plane and a car and say "They're both means of transportation, they're the same!".

Because you said the choices matter now. How do they matter when they don't?

...Because those talents have different strengths and weaknesses?
So given a certain situation, my talent choice have an impact on my playstyle and performance.

Again, incorrect. Frost has a lot of defensive talents. Fire has a lot of offensive.

The issue is that those offensive options are worse unless you spent a shit ton of points into them.

Fireball and Frostbolt compete for the same position, one of them is better, if you improve both, you are worse than someone who improves just one of them.
This is what you ignore and go "Well if i also go fire, i improve my offensive potential" - yes, because you already made up your mind that you want to use Fireball regardless whether it's better or worse than Frostbolt.

Yet again, you've ignored my point. We're talking about talents not classes. If a Mage goes pure Fire or pure Frost, they'll do more DPS because they've "mastered" their spec compared to someone who hasn't invested all points in. But pushing for the highest DPS isn't the end-all-be-all unless you're raiding.

The problem is just that someone who gives deep Frost still does more damage.
In other words, they do more damage than you while having the same defensive capabilities, this is the point where you made your character objectively worse.

Most people farmed for their mounts, leveled alts, and other things. And in those things the mathematically best spec did NOT matter. It was about your own playstyle.

Maybe you haven't it noticed it, but WoW has from away from Vanilla a long time ago.
By a long time, i mean TBC.

And in my opinion you lack imagination.

It has less to do with imagination but rather looking for objective answers.

Like, if someone wants to go frost for extra defense (and despite that, chooses to improve Frostbolt), it's only logical that you then choose talents to further improve Frost damage, rather than make a U-Turn and go into Fire, because you are not automatically gaining dps out of Fire related talents unless you decide to use Fireball.

Why? Because they can pick up powerful Frost talents right off the bat.

And the truth you just refuse to accept is the fact that there's an objective answer which of these two (meaning Frost and Fireball) is better, especially once talents get involved.
Else, you are simply using Fireball "because you can", which you assured me isn't true.

Because his rational is the only thing that matters. :insert eyeroll here:

I fine am with people wanting to play suboptimal specs, but some rationale should be involved in their choices, rather than just pressing a certain button despite that there's a objectively superior alternative.

Like, if you're leveling an Enhance Shaman, then you should stop using Rockbiter and start using Windfury once you hit 30.

[Selah]

I think that it just went over your head.

Over my head? You're the one whose failed time and time again to provide arguments that stand on their own. I highly doubt it's something that's "gone over my head."

This is another statement that makes no sense. I'm asking why you waited so long to address something that is so very deeply a problem for you and you instead blame it on my lack of understanding. Seems far more likely that you thought you could take the argument in a different direction and when it failed to play out in your favor you then decided to raise issue with it.

Because i've raised the example that, let's say not speccing into Crusader Strike despite being Ret, is not something that is "good customization" to me.

No one said it was "good customization." I said "let the player run that build without CS/DS and see what works, they'll either find a reasonable alternative or they'll completely fail and do something else." I even made a point of highlighting what would happen when the build failed.

It has less to with rejecting, but rather keeping things down, those posts have grown big enough.

You've only begun to use this argument now, if that was a genuine concern of yours, why would you wait days to say that? Better yet, why wouldn't you just trim down the arguments to their core argument?

Of course, post length actually has nothing to do with the fact that when you were presented with multiple sources of information that contradicted what you were saying.

I fine am with people wanting to play suboptimal specs, but some rationale should be involved in their choices, rather than just pressing a certain button despite that there's a objectively superior alternative.

This sentence kills me. You're contradicting yourself right here. How do you think people play sub-optimal specs? They make sub-optimal choices. Often choices in service to either a game-play or class fantasy. I'm curious... what does a sub-optimal spec look like to you then?

Like, if you're leveling an Enhance Shaman, then you should stop using Rockbiter and start using Windfury once you hit 30

Then you make statements like this and I can't help wonder if you know what you're talking about. The big thing with Rockbiter wasn't the AP, it was the fact that it generated threat. Enhancement was always tanky in vanilla, RB and ES generated a ton of threat and then you paired that with LS to help generate more threat. It never panned out to be proper tank obviously, but it was all about that threat.

[Kralljin]

This is another statement that makes no sense. I'm asking why you waited so long to address something that is so very deeply a problem for you and you instead blame it on my lack of understanding.

I've raised the argument pretty early that this is really only counting it as customization for the sake of counting it.

Like, imagine being at work doing something you hate, standing up and going home is technically an option, but most people wouldn't seriously consider this a reasonable option.

Options aren't always reasonable options.

No one said it was "good customization." I said "let the player run that build without CS/DS and see what works, they'll either find a reasonable alternative or they'll completely fail and do something else."

Yes and there never was a reasonable alternative.
You just raise an option that has never existed.

Of course, post length actually has nothing to do with the fact

Actually, they do.

Because as said earlier, i'm not going to argue over the same topic, with just a different class being the subject, despite that the core arguments remain essentially the same.

This sentence kills me. You're contradicting yourself right here. How do you think people play sub-optimal specs? They make sub-optimal choices. Often choices in service to either a game-play or class fantasy. I'm curious... what does a sub-optimal spec look like to you then?

Pretty simple.
Take specs such as Balance / Ele in Vanilla, it's generally agreed upon that those specs were inferior compared to Feral / Enhance as far as leveling is concerned.

One could still play them, that was fine to me, you then selected the talents that directly improved this, rather than deliberately passing over core abilities for the sake of "customization" or then choosing talents that did not synergize at all with previously spent talentpoints.

If someone wants to play SV, go ahead, do it, but then make a decent attempt at making it good.

Then you make statements like this and I can't help wonder if you know what you're talking about. The big thing with Rockbiter wasn't the AP, it was the fact that it generated threat. Enhancement was always tanky in vanilla, RB and ES generated a ton of threat and then you paired that with LS to help generate more threat. It never panned out to be proper tank obviously, but it was all about that threat.

And you're just reading too much into this example.
When leveling an Enhancement Shaman, and you put Rockbiter on your weapon over Windfury, you'll be just doing worse, simply because you refuse to make a minor change.
But yeah, it's customization!

I haven't lost a word about them attempting to tank anything, you're free to replace Rockbiter with Frostbrand or Flametongue.

[Raugnaut]

The sad thing is that we are pretty much back to where we were before - Half the talents in the new talent trees for ALL specs are pretty much boring "You deal +6-8% more damage, period". The other half are talents you can pick to 'slightly' complicate your rotation in exchange for.. Maybe .5% more damage over the default flat damage boosting talent?

It's terrible. They should do away with talents entirely, and give the glyph system back, where you can either make PvP-oriented decisions (Reduced silence, better interupts), or sacrifice one part of an ability for a boost to another portion (Half CD and duration on major cooldown, or double CD/duration, ect).

Really, what even happened with the talents? MoP was solid, WoD was allright, but it just went to shit with Legion and has continued as much with BfA.

And then, when people DO find something that's different, and new, and fun, and if it beats what Blizzard has in their own little corrupted cesspit of a perfect gaming world, Blizz nerfs it to the ground - Nevermind that they COULD just nerf it to, say, 5% under what they were doing, no, they have to nerf it to the !@#$ing ground.

[Big Thanks]

Why even make a thread if you don't want to hear rational arguments because you believe they are objectively wrong?

Here's the reality about the old talent trees:

1. The little choice that was there was in most cases insignificant, or just downright unviable. Not "just for 3v3 and raiding", but everywhere.
2. All this "player made fun" and interesting talent choices, were made by like 5 people worldwide and put on youtube, which makes some believe more people did this, they didn't.
3. The old talent trees were confusing as hell. Unless you were extremely well versed in the game, OR knew that you had to look it up somewhere and not just pick random stuff. This was fixed to a point at later stages of the game (for example you were locked to just one tree until you reach the end), but at the beginning, there was absolutely no guideline as to how to spend your points. I can't even imagine how many people completely messed up their character and as a result probably quit the game.

So basically, there were pretty much no pros to that old system, outside of some very rare cases of some pro players picking slightly different things, and the cons were disastrous - game breaking for many players.

If you can look past your own nose, there's no way you support the old talent system.



Do you think people who are picking talents in 3 trees simultaneously and wasting them on garbage are having fun? It's the other way around. Only the very knowledgeable players know how to get through the classic-style talent tree and get the most out of it. Most will just pick at random and mess up their character

You couldnt be more wrong.

I can show you my "self made" talent tree that got me 2100 rating in 5v5 arena.

https://wotlkdb.com/?talent#fZhxGb0fE00urZxzfdhhkdV0h

Talents

12% dodge + parry chance passive + ghostly strike 27% avoidance + the base dodge chance of a rogue at the time (i forget what was)
ignores a shiton of armor with Serrated Blades and Mace specialization
improved sprint + preparation
30% reduced damage while stunned
interrupt on deadly throw
+4% of entire stamina pool
Cheat Death

------------------

Customization

I had all gem slots with stamina and had +4% extra stamina from a talent
Meta gem of -10% time stunned...which also gave stamina
Tank stamina trinkets

-----------------

I was the punching bag of the team they all focused me and regreted doing so...and we got 2100 rating this way.

CUSTOMIZATION AT ITS BEST IMO

[Steelangel]

But one of these system is removing these "gimmick" builds, "fun builds" or "completely unusable in most cases but still..play what you want" builds. Why? Why it needs to be this way?

How many players actually did this compared to the players who, when faced with a daunting set of choices and knowing there was a large respec fee simply looked up "what is best" and went with it?

I know that's what I did when I started playing. I didn't care about what sort of wacky combos existed, I just wanted to kill shit and get into dungeons and raids and be useful.

[Selah]

I've raised the argument pretty early that this is really only counting it as customization for the sake of counting it.

That's not what we're talking about here. You said you took issue with the working standard I put forth about what constitutes a build. You never once took issue with it over the period of days. You seem to be very hung up on this "customization" idea that only has been put forward by you in this conversation. I've mentioned at least twice now what I enjoy the builds and what I believe it brings to the game. You seem either unwilling to unable to process this bit of information.

Like, imagine being at work doing something you hate, standing up and going home is technically an option, but most people wouldn't seriously consider this a reasonable option.

Options aren't always reasonable options.

I'm sorry, please explain how being able to provide for yourself and potentially others translates into what people enjoy playing when it comes to class and game-play fantasies? This whole argument is predicated on the idea that you'll starve if you quit working and you want me to defend someone going home and starving. I'm not going to play ball with such a blatantly dishonest argument. You can do better than this.

Yes and there never was a reasonable alternative.
You just raise an option that has never existed.

It doesn't matter if there was a reasonable alternative. Like I said before, they'll realize there was no alternative. This is all assuming there was no alternative to CS, keep in mind that CS didn't even exist in vanilla and it was a talent far deeper in the tree in wrath. Ret had to play without it for a while anyways.

What I'm not understanding is, why do you care what other people are playing? Imagining a worst case scenario and someone does a crazy build that doesn't work, why do you care? They're not going to be brought along raiding or playing instanced content until they correct this. Why do you care?

Actually, they do.

Because as said earlier, i'm not going to argue over the same topic, with just a different class being the subject, despite that the core arguments remain essentially the same.

You made the claim that hybrids only existed for X classes, every class at this point has come out of the woodwork and told you that wasn't true with the exception maybe being Paladin. Your entire argument from that point was "no" with no reason or rational given except "post length." The core of your argument is fundamentally flawed and has been contradicted time and time and time again. At this point it seems you're just arguing for the sake of arguing or not wanting to admit your arguments need work.

Pretty simple.
Take specs such as Balance / Ele in Vanilla, it's generally agreed upon that those specs were inferior compared to Feral / Enhance as far as leveling is concerned.


One could still play them, that was fine to me, you then selected the talents that directly improved this, rather than deliberately passing over core abilities for the sake of "customization" or then choosing talents that did not synergize at all with previously spent talentpoints.

And what's going to happen when they do this? The very thing I've been saying will happen. It will either fail and they'll change it or they'll find a reasonably working alternative.

The other thing with this that you're not acknowledging about this scenario is that when this happens, people learn about their class and subsequently more about the game. Which is a net positive.

If someone wants to play SV, go ahead, do it, but then make a decent attempt at making it good.

Why even play SV then? Using your logic that you just applied above, we should just skip SV altogether and pick the most optimal class and spec. Unless... there is inherent value in class and game-play fantasies, like I've been saying for a while now.

And you're just reading too much into this example.
When leveling an Enhancement Shaman, and you put Rockbiter on your weapon over Windfury, you'll be just doing worse, simply because you refuse to make a minor change.
But yeah, it's customization!

No, I'm not. I'm highlighting (and being extremely obvious about it) what you're missing from this conversation. RB generated high threat, when paired with ES and LS it helped you to hold high threat. This begs the question, why would someone want high threat? Because they were tanking content. Here is a list of reasons people might want to be tanking.

-open world content and they formed a small group
-instanced content and they're OT for the group because the tank is having problems
-instanced content and they're tanking
-they're kiting mobs and need to hold aggro
-they're pulling dangerous mobs away from the group to protect them from a fatal mechanic

There is more to this game than just the idea of making your DPS numbers grow larger. The fact that I have to highlight this and underline in such a broad and obvious way shows you lack an understand of what is being discussed.

I haven't lost a word about them attempting to tank anything, you're free to replace Rockbiter with Frostbrand or Flametongue.

Another demonstration of a lack of understanding on your end. If you have a choice between the three, they're going to be situational. RB if you want to hold threat, FB if you have a target that is running from you, and FT if you have a large slow weapon and you only care about DPS.

[The Stormbringer]

To be honest, they re-introduced the old talent tree in the form of TADA "legion artifacts traits" now it worked? yes, it mixed with the talent tree? yes.
Now they tried with Azerite Armor, it worked? no? why? because of the lack of "traits" or "game changer traits" apart from "the grind wall" and "hard to obtain" that it was resolve on 8.1. SO they know what to "Not do and what to do now", they just need to "execute it properly"

So the old talent tree can work? yes, what it needs to NOT BE ON IT, talents that only gave damage %, crit %, generally Stats, second stats.
What SHOULD BE ON IT, talents that gave something and remove something, new skills, actives and pasives that change your gameplay or the pasing of you style of gameplay.

The weapon could've worked better if there were, say, paths you had to choose to go down otherwise they'd be locked out to you, though you would be able to re-roll to get points back to try another path. Make it closer to how old talent trees worked, y'know? They could then boost certain traits you pick to be more potent and impactful. That said, I did like the overall "talent tree" design.

[Big Thanks]

The weapon could've worked better if there were, say, paths you had to choose to go down otherwise they'd be locked out to you, though you would be able to re-roll to get points back to try another path. Make it closer to how old talent trees worked, y'know? They could then boost certain traits you pick to be more potent and impactful. That said, I did like the overall "talent tree" design.

I remember as clear as day, because i fought on forums for Blizzard to make legion artifacts like that...but i failed.

Blizzard made a blue post saying they were unsure if legion artifacts:
1) Would unlock all traits eventually
2) Or not

I fought to not unlock them all

Blizzard went with unlocking them all

[The Stormbringer]

I remember as clear as day, because i fought on forums for Blizzard to make legion artifacts like that...but i failed.

Blizzard made a blue post saying they were unsure if legion artifacts:
1) Would unlock all traits eventually
2) Or not

I fought to not unlock them all

Blizzard went with unlocking them all

Yeah, as nice as it is to see everything filled up, there is a certain joy in taking the time to try different builds and find out what you like best. When they just saying, "Okay, have all of it" then that does kinda ruin it a bit. Especially since adding restrictions means you can make other aspects more powerful and game-changing.

[Littleraven]

I still feel like there is a system that works somewhere in all the shit they have tried. They just need to find the "cocktail" that works together. I actually like the way the new talents work but even now they have gotten stale.

A mix of the current system with the original trees could work but I don't know how they could balance it. Maybe take the original glyph system into account and have the abilities be basically the same but have different augments depending on the choice you make. The only issue with that is balancing the augments. I'm no game designer and I can't imaging trying ot deal with the essential butterfly effect of every change because even trying to think of issues with what I just said is giving me anxiety lol.

And if Blizzard has shown us anything....it's that shit that sounds good on paper has massive potential to fail if not enough eyes get on it and actually see how it works long term.

[Big Thanks]

I still feel like there is a system that works somewhere in all the shit they have tried. They just need to find the "cocktail" that works together. I actually like the way the new talents work but even now they have gotten stale.

A mix of the current system with the original trees could work but I don't know how they could balance it. Maybe take the original glyph system into account and have the abilities be basically the same but have different augments depending on the choice you make. The only issue with that is balancing the augments. I'm no game designer and I can't imaging trying ot deal with the essential butterfly effect of every change because even trying to think of issues with what I just said is giving me anxiety lol.

And if Blizzard has shown us anything....it's that shit that sounds good on paper has massive potential to fail if not enough eyes get on it and actually see how it works long term.

There is absolutely zero customization today because:
1) Accommodates bad players
2) Blizz got lazy
3) Easier to balance game

imo