9.0 General Discussion

[huth]

Suppose you got a point.

I feel like the Conduit upgrade tokens and Gem Slots are good and all, but it's not quite there yet.

Well, it sounds like they do intend to give some permanent Torghast advantages to Ve'nawhatever, so that'd be a reason to go there, although not necessarily something you need to actually do Torghast.

[Sondrelk]

Well, it sounds like they do intend to give some permanent Torghast advantages to Ve'nawhatever, so that'd be a reason to go there, although not necessarily something you need to actually do Torghast.

Last I chekced they amde it so you got an item that adds a socket to gear from him, which would be the most common reason to go there.

[Sharby]

I prefer passive talents because I don't want buttons for the sake of buttons, or at least four different AoE abilities or something.

I agree and I prefer passive talents myself. But I wish they were baseline.

Having three talents per row doesn't have to be the norm.


I don't see why PvE talents can't just be like PvP ones. Tiers are removed and instead you can choose a combination of any 7. You would unlock more slots/talents as you leveled to keep sense of progression. But it would remove a lot of frustration from being forced to sacrifice essential parts of a spec for another essential part because they're on the same tier.

[TomatoBisque]

I don't see why PvE talents can't just be like PvP ones. Tiers are removed and instead you can choose a combination of any 7. You would unlock more slots/talents as you leveled to keep sense of progression. But it would remove a lot of frustration from being forced to sacrifice essential parts of a spec for another essential part because they're on the same tier.

The reason they don't work like this is it would be an order of magnitude more difficult to balance unless a ton of talents were removed

If we ignore the two utility rows that most specs have, there are 243 possible talent combinations for each spec. If we were to make it so that they players could choose any 7 of the 15, the number of possible combinations becomes 6435. If we were to change it to 5 of 15 to discount the utility talents, it's still 3003

It takes the current balancing issues and makes it ten times worse

[Gorsameth]

I agree and I prefer passive talents myself. But I wish they were baseline.

Having three talents per row doesn't have to be the norm.


I don't see why PvE talents can't just be like PvP ones. Tiers are removed and instead you can choose a combination of any 7. You would unlock more slots/talents as you leveled to keep sense of progression. But it would remove a lot of frustration from being forced to sacrifice essential parts of a spec for another essential part because they're on the same tier.

Say goodbye to most utility or flavor talents, it will be simply the 6 best throughput talents and 1 mobility/survivablity.
This would lead to more cookie cutter builds, not less.

[Sondrelk]

Any freeform talent setup would require a minimum amount of utility picks to function, otherwise it would just be picking the best throughput ones unless a boss required some specific utility.

That being said I do hope we get a talent tree revamp the next expansion, as I mentioned before it has been ages since the last time talent trees were revamped and it could really do with the devs sitting down and considering whether a new approach would fit the current version of the game better.

Personally I feel the ideal might be a middleground between the "freeform" trees we had before and the current rigid system we have now. Maybe something where you decide what part of your spec to focus on. For instance being a fury warrior and having 3 talents that either increase how much rage you get, how much damage rampage does, or giving you a cool ability, each one having 3 ranks and then being givne 5 points or something. It would probably lead ot cookie cutter builds, but it might be more inteersting as a gameplay mechanic than what we have now.

[TomatoBisque]

Say goodbye to most utility or flavor talents, it will be simply the 6 best throughput talents and 1 mobility/survivablity.
This would lead to more cookie cutter builds, not less.

it would also greatly exacerbate the difference in talent builds and make encounter design even more difficult as well further punish people for not minmaxing, since with this you'd be able to take the optimal six talents for each encounter so if you're fighting a pure ST boss you can take all ST increases and then switch to all the cleave talents for the cleave fight etc.

[Sondrelk]

it would also greatly exacerbate the difference in talent builds and make encounter design even more difficult as well further punish people for not minmaxing, since with this you'd be able to take the optimal six talents for each encounter so if you're fighting a pure ST boss you can take all ST increases and then switch to all the cleave talents for the cleave fight etc.

Hopefully Shadowlands will manage to reverse soem fo the damage caused by prevalent minmaxing in every aspect of the game, with some luck we could have more interesting talents again.

[Sharby]

Any freeform talent setup would require a minimum amount of utility picks to function, otherwise it would just be picking the best throughput ones unless a boss required some specific utility.

That being said I do hope we get a talent tree revamp the next expansion, as I mentioned before it has been ages since the last time talent trees were revamped and it could really do with the devs sitting down and considering whether a new approach would fit the current version of the game better.

Personally I feel the ideal might be a middleground between the "freeform" trees we had before and the current rigid system we have now. Maybe something where you decide what part of your spec to focus on. For instance being a fury warrior and having 3 talents that either increase how much rage you get, how much damage rampage does, or giving you a cool ability, each one having 3 ranks and then being givne 5 points or something. It would probably lead ot cookie cutter builds, but it might be more inteersting as a gameplay mechanic than what we have now.

I mean if utility talents are that undesirable then that speaks for something being wrong with the game atm.


If corruption is any metric, right now damage is just always going to be king even at the cost of utility/safety. You shouldn't be forced into picking utility, the game should be designed in a way that makes utility attractive enough to where you would want to pick it over damage. In an ideal world at least.

For me the current talent system is ass because they make previously baseline things (artifact abilities) talents that are on the same tier as critical abilities, choosing either one feels terrible when you used to be able to have both.

[TomatoBisque]

Hopefully Shadowlands will manage to reverse soem fo the damage caused by prevalent minmaxing in every aspect of the game, with some luck we could have more interesting talents again.

it would require its playerbase to entirely change, which is unlikely

people who care more about rpg mechanics than minmaxing have long since left for other games and it's unlikely they come back

[huth]

I mean if utility talents are that undesirable then that speaks for something being wrong with the game atm.

Not really. It's simply a matter of specialisation always trumping generalists if you can adapt your specialists to the situation.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

it would require its playerbase to entirely change, which is unlikely

people who care more about rpg mechanics than minmaxing have long since left for other games and it's unlikely they come back

I don't think its really that simple, you aren't going to get the likes that are like Method to change. That is unlikely, I think just going for invested players(As in the middle ground between casual and hardcore which is most of...gaming population IMO).

[Razion]

I agree and I prefer passive talents myself. But I wish they were baseline.

Having three talents per row doesn't have to be the norm.

I don't see why PvE talents can't just be like PvP ones. Tiers are removed and instead you can choose a combination of any 7. You would unlock more slots/talents as you leveled to keep sense of progression. But it would remove a lot of frustration from being forced to sacrifice essential parts of a spec for another essential part because they're on the same tier.

A big problem with this is how talents synergize.
Talents that work together are valued higher together, and much less when taken without the others.
So balance has to take these factors into account. Especially talents that don't have particular stacking synergy with anything else.
Then you run into a problem of potentially having to make talents that don't synergize with anything in your class or spec, thereby losing a lot of depth. Otherwise, everything has to synergize and then everything could start to feel the same or like the synergies aren't special or that they even start to be mandatory - and then the level of synergy starts to be the focus and meta of talents. Even in survival and utility meta, synergy scaling and stacking is a factor and especially between other factors like even racials can be taken into account.

[Lahis]

I mean if utility talents are that undesirable then that speaks for something being wrong with the game atm.


If corruption is any metric, right now damage is just always going to be king even at the cost of utility/safety. You shouldn't be forced into picking utility, the game should be designed in a way that makes utility attractive enough to where you would want to pick it over damage. In an ideal world at least.

For me the current talent system is ass because they make previously baseline things (artifact abilities) talents that are on the same tier as critical abilities, choosing either one feels terrible when you used to be able to have both.

There is no world where utility will be picked over throughput. Putting utility talents on the same row as throughput talents makes them dead talents.

[Gorsameth]

Hopefully Shadowlands will manage to reverse soem fo the damage caused by prevalent minmaxing in every aspect of the game, with some luck we could have more interesting talents again.

It won't. Because the problem isn't the game, its the people. And it goes way way beyond simply WoW.
Min/maxing is everywhere in gaming.

[Sharby]

There is no world where utility will be picked over throughput. Putting utility talents on the same row as throughput talents makes them dead talents.

I don't think they should be mandatory, but I dislike tiers that are entirely utility. I would rather be able to select two throughput talents because they're spread out rather than having to take utility talents I rarely use while having to choose between two talents on another tier I should be able to have at the same time.

[Cosmic Janitor]

There is no world where utility will be picked over throughput. Putting utility talents on the same row as throughput talents makes them dead talents.

That just comes down to game design, but in the context of wow and enmies being just HP sponges, yes it will probably never be desireable unless alot of the framework is changed. Some utlility could and is important (especially at the higher end of the difficulty curve) if it is required, but that comes with it's own issues.

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I don't think they should be mandatory, but I dislike tiers that are entirely utility. I would rather be able to select two throughput talents because they're spread out rather than having to take utility talents I rarely use while having to choose between two talents on another tier I should be able to have at the same time.

That just creates dead talent rows in the current enviroment. You essentially just said you don't want the row to be about utlity because you aren't using it very often. You might as well not have the row then if you only pick one talent all the time.

[Syegfryed]

i myself, think the current talent three need to die, be killed until it dies, current blizzard show they can't balance so lets do another way: 3 options in the same row to change the color and effects of a skill, fuck it

By example, the first 3 options change the color of shadowbolt to green fire, fiery fire and purple void, for shamans, first row can change the lavaburst to a lighting attack, or a boulder going at you, or an enhanced lava visual, no dps or utility, just customization.

At least we get some of the old glyph vibes and we don't have to worry about crap talents that no one pick and blizz don't balance, they can stop putting obligatory talents in the talent tree and they can focus on the class design itself.

Of course not gonna happen, it may be silly, but im up for that, we always end up getting the same talent anyway because they are garbage, at least i could change some skills to look cool.

[huth]

I don't think they should be mandatory, but I dislike tiers that are entirely utility. I would rather be able to select two throughput talents because they're spread out rather than having to take utility talents I rarely use while having to choose between two talents on another tier I should be able to have at the same time.

But that's the point. You wouldn't pick up any utility talents if the game didn't force you. And if they are on the same tier, it's specificially because you shouldn't be able to have both. That's kinda the point of the tier design.

[SirBeef]

Hopefully Shadowlands will manage to reverse soem fo the damage caused by prevalent minmaxing in every aspect of the game, with some luck we could have more interesting talents again.

Minmaxing everything will always happen as long as math is involved. However no one has to follow it.

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i myself, think the current talent three need to die, be killed until it dies, current blizzard show they can't balance so lets do another way: 3 options in the same row to change the color and effects of a skill, fuck it

By example, the first 3 options change the color of shadowbolt to green fire, fiery fire and purple void, for shamans, first row can change the lavaburst to a lighting attack, or a boulder going at you, or an enhanced lava visual, no dps or utility, just customization.

At least we get some of the old glyph vibes and we don't have to worry about crap talents that no one pick and blizz don't balance, they can stop putting obligatory talents in the talent tree and they can focus on the class design itself.

Of course not gonna happen, it may be silly, but im up for that, we always end up getting the same talent anyway because they are garbage, at least i could change some skills to look cool.

You say this as if old Blizzard could balance anything.