If We're Going Back to Level 60, Why not Bring Back Talent Trees?

[Froggy]

Classic talent system wasn't perfect, and the current one certainly isn't either. I just want something more interesting than "choose between these 3".

[dextersmith]

I mean part of the reason they were scrapped and/or rehashed was because the amount of talent points became bloated by level 80.

It seems like the route Blizz is going is to just perpetually keep us at level 60. Which I'm fine with. But instead of all this borrowed power stuff, why not just give us back our talent trees and improve on them. They're far more exciting when leveling. And Blizzard can perhaps introduce "talent pages" for when we need to quickly respec (no mis allocating points accidently).

They can keep the current PvP Talents to compliment the actual Talent Trees. Thoughts?

I thought it was because of cookie cutter builds and balancing cross specs. The original talent trees were the best.

So you can't grow your character virtually after 60? That got trite fast with GW1. Why bother with levels at all then?

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Current talents offer more meaningful™ choices depending on the situation.

Not if you can swap it out.

[Kallor]

Bring back the old talent tree, but with more balance/harder choices. No terrible options, just a myriad of good ones for different situations.

[kaintk]

I mean part of the reason they were scrapped and/or rehashed was because the amount of talent points became bloated by level 80.

It seems like the route Blizz is going is to just perpetually keep us at level 60. Which I'm fine with. But instead of all this borrowed power stuff, why not just give us back our talent trees and improve on them. They're far more exciting when leveling. And Blizzard can perhaps introduce "talent pages" for when we need to quickly respec (no mis allocating points accidently).

They can keep the current PvP Talents to compliment the actual Talent Trees. Thoughts?

you make me laugh with old talent vs new talents tree...

let me ask you : what the difference between old and new talents tree that everyone will copy paste from wowhead or whatever site that will post the same op build for each class ?

[Triceron]

you make me laugh with old talent vs new talents tree...

let me ask you : what the difference between old and new talents tree that everyone will copy paste from wowhead or whatever site that will post the same op build for each class ?

Leveling up.

Talent trees aren't really ever for the end-game, which is what people don't get. It's a progression system. At the end of the day, all 'Talents' and such systems (Artifact power, Covenant) will be subject to copypasta BIS builds in the end game. So why bother designing specifically for end-game viability when people just copy paste the builds and hot swap for specific encounters routinely? Why even offer these every 15-levels or so instead of just giving you a bunch of them at once at the very beginning or once you hit end game? Talents should be a system that makes progression for leveling fun again.

[corebit]

In a way, the covenant soulbinds are already a new form of talent tree that Blizzard is playing with. If they turn out to be successful, who knows, maybe they will bake them into the classes themselves next expansion?

[Samuraijake]

we have talent trees they are call soulbinds

[Noctiphobia]

They'd have to create meaningful AND balanced talents from scratch for everyone for it to make sense. They're kind of doing this with soulbinds already.
I don't think many people want talents like we had before the rework where you have almost 0 choices, and the non-choices you make are unnoticeable crap like "+1% crit chance" that don't change your play style at all.

[Wolfrick]

I'm a long time veteren that uses way to much time in thinking about World of Warcraft and how to make it better ^^

So if you ask me, Blizzard are going to give us the Vanilla/Classic style spec talenttress in 10.0 (The expansion after shadowlands)... WHY?

Well, the Soulbinds we get in shadowlands... feel like a test they are doing to reimplement the old talentres... so I think we are going for a back to basics if you look at the future of World of Warcraft.

while World of Warcraft is awesome... it lost some of its best part during the years of it expansions, so its great to look at the past and bring back what really made World of Warcraft so great!

If you ask me... what made World of Warcraft so great... was Choice ^^

[TheLucky1]

With the exception of leveling the old talent trees are in no way better than the ones we currently have.

[WowClassic]

I guess the "lol classic talents are cookie cutter" brigade haven't seen the number of different Rogue specs in Classic for both pve and pvp. I have had to respec with each content release to be optimal for the latest raid while slightly nerfing myself in the previous raid for example, that is more meaningful than anything retail offers.

[Zarc]

I always liked the old talent tree system better than the new one. Maybe it was an illusion of choice, but that illusion worked. It also made you feel good when leveling up. I never had a problem with the fact that for endgame there was a "correct" build that you'd look up online and just copy.

[Kaver]

You can play with any of the four covenants. You don't have to be super leet to complete content.

But you can say the same thing about the old talent trees the. You could play any talent that you wanted. With the old talent tree you didn’t have to pick a cookie cutter build to complete content. You could make your own choices if you wanted. Just like covenants.

I don’t want the old talent trees back because I don’t think they fit the game anymore, but I think it’s hypocritical of you to say that the old talent didn’t offered any choices while saying that the covenants do. Both the old talent trees and covenants have cookie cutter builds that most people who care about performance will pick.

[TheLucky1]

I guess the "lol classic talents are cookie cutter" brigade haven't seen the number of different Rogue specs in Classic for both pve and pvp. I have had to respec with each content release to be optimal for the latest raid while slightly nerfing myself in the previous raid for example, that is more meaningful than anything retail offers.

You mean like you change talents rn depending on mythic+ dungeon, raid encounter or pvp?

Edit: or even depending on how you want to play if you can comprehend that you don't need to squeeze out a few % for everything except the highest keystones and mythic raiding..

[Mightytasty]

Talent trees served the dual purpose of offering progression during leveling and differentiating your spec from your baseline class.

[TaurenNinja]

I guess the "lol classic talents are cookie cutter" brigade haven't seen the number of different Rogue specs in Classic for both pve and pvp. I have had to respec with each content release to be optimal for the latest raid while slightly nerfing myself in the previous raid for example, that is more meaningful than anything retail offers.

Well, in the current game, you can (and have to, if you're doing difficult content) respec for each *boss* or encounter, not just for each content or whole raid.
So I'm not sure what you mean by meaningful, but this is objectively better than not having to respec at all during a whole raid, because you have to think about your talent choices more (for each boss) rather than just once before you enter the raid.

[Wolfrick]

Easy... Because in two expansions we will be right back with the same problem we had when Cata hit. Trees are dead. Get used to it.

You know that we will stay on level 60 forvere... each expansion they will just push us down to 50 and then make us level up to 60 again

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I think the problem wasn't in the talent tree concept itself, talent trees are f**king amazing just look at Path of Exile.

The problem lies in the Classic talent trees, these were just bad. Too few points, too few options, some completely worthless, others completely OP. This is what led to cookie cutter builds, not the system itself imo.

TBC was already a huge improvement over Classic in that area, many bad talents were buffed, some others baked in the class baseline.

This is 100% the truth... people always cry out how bad those trees was... its about choice... and trees like vanilla gave us alot of choice

[rrayy]

But you can say the same thing about the old talent trees the. You could play any talent that you wanted. With the old talent tree you didn’t have to pick a cookie cutter build to complete content. You could make your own choices if you wanted. Just like covenants.

I don’t want the old talent trees back because I don’t think they fit the game anymore, but I think it’s hypocritical of you to say that the old talent didn’t offered any choices while saying that the covenants do. Both the old talent trees and covenants have cookie cutter builds that most people who care about performance will pick.

But the covenants do have choice. Increasing your existing abilities by a % is not a choice. Getting a different ability based on the covenant is.

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You know that we will stay on level 60 forvere... each expansion they will just push us down to 50 and then make us level up to 60 again

You don't know that. Blizzard has not said what they will be doing the next expansion.

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This is 100% the truth... people always cry out how bad those trees was... its about choice... and trees like vanilla gave us alot of choice

They didn't give you any choice. They gave you the ILLUSION of choice. Increasing an ability by a % was not a choice. It was use the cookie cutter or you don't raid.

[breadisfunny]

because it's 4 weeks til launch why would they add something in at the last second just to push back the date even further that they don't want to implement in the first place? plus if you want a talent tree so bad classic wow has one no?

[Wolfrick]

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You don't know that. Blizzard has not said what they will be doing the next expansion.

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They didn't give you any choice. They gave you the ILLUSION of choice. Increasing an ability by a % was not a choice. It was use the cookie cutter or you don't raid.

1st, one have to be blind to not see that the entire squish and how they have made leveling from 1 to 50 be able to apply on every expansion with a chromi tooltip... that has more spaces to ad more expalsins to that interface...

2nd, the very squish of levels and giving us a 10 level in the new expansion out of 60 levels, is a very smart way to keep the game at a stady level, so as I said, one have to be very naive or narrow eyed to not see that its a huge potential to be an ever green content system that could bring it alot of new players even 10 years from now... having 120 levels is a huge pain for new player... the very number feels way to big. (Other MMORPGs content creators... use the 120 levels as a token to talk about in interviews of a bad mmo design... not stating that its about wow... but its very self evident that they are talking about wow)

3rd, well, you are right I dont Raid... and I play the game 24/7... everyday of the week, and a talent tree would be amazing since it gives you the choies to build the character the way you want... if you think its an Illusion... since you force your brain to follow the crowds... then that is on you... I have never ever done what the masses want me to do... so stating its an illusion of choice... is like saying.... (Why keep on living... we will die in the end... so Life it self is an illusion of living... since death is inevitable..) world of warcraft with a huge player base... and having the old talent trees would give people who just level all the time and never watch guides... alot of content... so they would enjoy the game we play way more.

4th, if in your eyes its an illusion... why not have it made... and then you can just follow guides... and keep it the same for the entire expansion... so in this case... having the old talent trees back would not effect you even a bit

5th, following the 4th point, it would be a win/win situation for us all if talent trees got back, every friend I have that returned to classic... always enjoy the talent trees and that you have to select 1 point each level... it gives the players a sence of progression...