Time for talents to go in 9.0?

[Irian]

Just bring back the trees. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the "illusion of choice" and there never has been.

Games are full of illusions. Gaming itself is full of illusions. If we use the mentality that any choice that has a "best" answer isn't a compelling choice then most RPGs are guilty of this. WoW is an RPG and the idea of building up your character through a combination of both passive and active effects is enjoyable.

I remember some specs being way more or less enjoyable because of their baked in effects that have no equivalent now. For example (and I might be wrong about the specifics, I'm going on memory) frost mages had a lot of talents that promoted crit damage to capitalize on their Shatter mechanic, and some classes like elemental shaman had naturally high baseline haste rating baked into their talents so you didn't have to rely on finding the extremely rare spell speed gear to get that enjoyable breakneck casting pace.

To be completely honest about my standing on talents, I don't actually like having these "real choices". In an effort to make them real, they've picked apart the classes in order to provide them shit that used to be baseline or in a talent that you'd be stupid not to take.
As a fun experiment, take every single talent in your tree and imagine how your class would play if you had every single effect from every active and passive on all of your rows. Of course some wouldn't work and some would be OP as hell but you get what I'm getting at here? I can say personally that a lot of my mains would almost resemble, say, MoP class design before they went and gutted the identity to slap it onto the talent row system.

I just don't really like the talent rows. As a demo lock for example, Azerite traits fundamentally changed the entire identity of my class whether I liked it or not. There were aspects to the class that were fun with the right but things like the haste bonus from Explosive Potential forced me into an awkward rotation that mandated very particular talents with little to no wiggle room.
I can't stand shit like that. I'm already making a choice to play a demo lock or a shadow priest or an arms warrior, I don't also want to play a totally different version of the same class that plays completely differently just because I got some traits that work with a very specific build.

[Kumorii]

My opinion:

The talent trees are only a mess because Blizzard decided in 7 rows to have
1) PvP talents
2) PvE talents
3) Utility talents

There is no way in hell ONLY in 7 rows to have all this crap put together and expect good results

So in my opinion blizzard should have
1) 7 rows of talent choices for PvE only (gameplay changing talents that change the way you play your class)
2) 7 rows of talent choices for Utility and PvP
3) The PvP talents we already have

I like the sound of this idea...

That won't solve the problem that there will always be an optimal choice dictated by what players calculate are the best ones.

You can make a million talents and all of them being unique and there would STILL be an optimal choice for different situations.

[Big Thanks]

That won't solve the problem that there will always be an optimal choice dictated by what players calculate are the best ones.

You can make a million talents and all of them being unique and there would STILL be an optimal choice for different situations.

How about this?
Divide the PvE talents into:
-Brain dead spec (all passives, easy to play)
-Difficult spec (proc, buff management and more buttons but better DPS)
-AoE spec

[Mermeoth]

I miss the trees. Grids are also interesting.

[czarek]

Just play style i think so. I really dont care about 5% dps more or smth like that. Im not hardcore player anymore :P

[Kumorii]

How about this?
Divide the PvE talents into:
-Brain dead spec (all passives, easy to play)
-Difficult spec (proc, buff management and more buttons but better DPS)
-AoE spec

That way the most difficult spec should deal most dmg. Thus it becomes the optimal one and you are expected to play it. If they are equal, the brain dead spec will be preferred due to less errors can be made. Easier for the same damage.

You can't escape optimal specs.

[Isheria]

How about this?
Divide the PvE talents into:
-Brain dead spec (all passives, easy to play)
-Difficult spec (proc, buff management and more buttons but better DPS)
-AoE spec

That's not how it works, passive talents shouldn't be undertuned because they are easier to play with, that's like the dumb argument people use that disc priests should do more healing than any other healing specs because they're harder to play optimally. In a perfect world all talents should be equal from a tuning perspective what you decide to use should be more of a playstyle choice instead of "i choose this because it's flat out better" from a numerical point of view.

[Sim]

Talent Trees are outdated now. People picked the same cookie cutter builds anyways which left a lot of talents unused, this way it cuts down on the bloat.

Biggest problem is that right now a choice between 3 always has a clear winner. If Blizzard would put more effort in "Balancing" these talent choices it would feel a lot better.

[Xaviaton]

I don't understand how removing player choice increases player agency by oh well. I still think talent trees as they are now serve a clear purpose. People always talk about how everything is "cookie cutter" based on the situation but to me as a casual player that is just not true. While some activated talents are straight-up superior in sims, there are several classes where I need to "dumb it down" by using passive talents instead of active ones when I start out and can add the activated abilities to the mix as I improve with a class. Others just enjoy simpler gameplay. At mid or low tier gameplay, the "optimal" setup doesn't really change things enough to make me pick boring or clunky talents that are "better". Examples of this is me never using Rune of Power on my mage, Barrage on my hunter, or Demon Blades on my demon hunter. Just because some people feel they are restricted to always pick the talents that the sims tell you are "optimal" doesn't mean people like me should be forced into the same mindset.

Additionally, Blizzard is currently toying with the implementation of more special effect items that can provide interesting talent/item combinations (not really there yet, but hopefully they can hit the sweet spot between Legiondaries and CoS/Mechagon items at some point).

I do, however, think they should make a "new" talent tree as well. Give players a talent tree similar to artifact talents while leveling to improve this experience. It won't actually change anything at max level because you will unlock all the talent points anyways but improves leveling experience. Effectively what OP suggests but keep the current talent trees in addition and let the player choose what the order of unlocks while leveling, don't make it automatic. The current talent system just flat-out sucks for leveling.

[Kokolums]

You can't escape optimal specs.

Yes you can.

This is a very old thread that keeps popping up every so often over the years. You CAN escape optimal specs by having bosses randomize their abilities every pull. Maybe one pull its a heavy single target fight. The next pull its a very heavy AoE fight. Maybe the next pull they have resistances. Optimal specs only exist because we get scripted encounters. If the encounters had a random element to them, people would be free to pick from a suite of talents because no spec would be the best.

[wanax]

Illusion of choice exists in any game no matter how complex, unless the choices are insignificant. There will always be the optimal choice as long as people will theorize and calculate it. The "illusion" of choice is a player made problem where as you should always be optimal otherwise you drag others down.

It was the exact same in vanilla, it's the exact same in most games that are multi-player and somewhat competitive.

This. The only place I can recall free choice in talent trees recently is in a game like Skyrim where you can talent into almost anything. If you put that in a multiplayer game like wow people would theorize and calculate until there was a Best spec

- - - Updated - - -

Yes you can.

This is a very old thread that keeps popping up every so often over the years. You CAN escape optimal specs by having bosses randomize their abilities every pull. Maybe one pull its a heavy single target fight. The next pull its a very heavy AoE fight. Maybe the next pull they have resistances. Optimal specs only exist because we get scripted encounters. If the encounters had a random element to them, people would be free to pick from a suite of talents because no spec would be the best.

Like an affix?

[Grimbold21]

The player choice of BfA is a complete illusion.
Ive never seen such a perfect illusion of choice like in BfA.
Its a complete mess

OP is right that "at this point" mught aswell remove them

But do i like this idea? NO! I would like old talent system back if not for PvE than for PvP and World content only.

You can't escape that. The old talent system had optimal (read: required) builds too.

[Rogalicus]

Remember that reason for tier sets removal was that "they were getting boring in Legion" and the reason reforging and coloured gems were removed is because "you just used AskMrRobot to reforge and gem correctly". How did that work out?

[Porcodio]

Remove them and gave 3 spell for any class

DPS

Heal

Block


And let's see how long it last

[Porcodio]

You can't escape that. The old talent system had optimal (read: required) builds too.

Old System at least hasn't you locked into a spec.

I could get Bestial Wrath and Aimed Shot or make the spec I wanted " I need more hit or I have already hit cap so i can switch to this or that "


Nothing amazing but still in vanilla there are case like hunter where you can play 4 different spec ( excluding hit cap )


Having a talent tree or a route ( like artifact ) is way more interesting than current talents.

Even if everybody and their mother knows that in any case there will be cookie cutter builds.




Blizzard need to give people a way to choose different playstile ( glimmer ) and still having them somehow balanced

[Azalar]

All I want is a FF10 or FF13 like Crystarium where you find all stuff you'll need for your spec and you can fill a lil bit of it every level. This isn't incompatible with MoP talent system because at certain points you could find choices that you could switch or change with talent books or something.

[justandulas]

I’d prefer they just admit the new talent system was a resounding failure. They shouldn’t have tried to clone diablo 3 talent system and stuff it into wow. What the Op is suggesting is to further dumb the game down

Introduce the talent trees back, but modernize them a bit with the current talents sprinkled in for real choice

[ManiaCCC]

You can't escape that. The old talent system had optimal (read: required) builds too.

Yet people were escaping this all the time. Remember, just 2-5% of people were active raiders. And maybe in these cutting-edge guilds, you have this "if you put one point off, you are out of roster, but for the rest, you could seen quite interesting/fun, thematic or just completely useless builds and no-one really cared that much. Dungeon runs or even raids had these sub-optimal builds and still were able to get through. PvP is different beast altogether.

[Grimbold21]

Yet people were escaping this all the time. Remember, just 2-5% of people were active raiders. And maybe in these cutting-edge guilds, you have this "if you put one point off, you are out of roster, but for the rest, you could seen quite interesting/fun, thematic or just completely useless builds and no-one really cared that much. Dungeon runs or even raids had these sub-optimal builds and still were able to get through. PvP is different beast altogether.

This is a misrepresentation. It wasn't only the top guilds that required this. Any decent guilt with any measure of concern for an acceptable pace of progress required their players to be properly specced.

I recall, I believe it was MC, my class leader telling me one of two things (I can't recall which one precisely): You're not getting promoted or you're not getting gear until you respec properly into Holy (Paladin), because at the time I was still raiding with, I dunno. 30 points in ret and 30 in Holy or smth, and the cookie cuter was smth like 40 or 41 in holy and the rest in ret.

And my guild wasn't cutting-edge by any stretch of the imagination

[Nnyco]

Yes you can.

This is a very old thread that keeps popping up every so often over the years. You CAN escape optimal specs by having bosses randomize their abilities every pull. Maybe one pull its a heavy single target fight. The next pull its a very heavy AoE fight. Maybe the next pull they have resistances. Optimal specs only exist because we get scripted encounters. If the encounters had a random element to them, people would be free to pick from a suite of talents because no spec would be the best.

You would just pull/wipe the boss until you get the easiest way to kill em.