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

[Rusken]

I'd like to see the old talent tress revamped in a post-Shadowlands expansion and brought in as "Paragon talents" essentially replacing leveling past 60 in future expansions and eventually needing another squish. If you're familiar with D3/ESO, the Paragon/Champion Points from those are something I see working well for WoW. If you're not familiar, it's essentially just progression past max character level that offers very small boosts per point. Every level you'd have a choice between .1% Mastery/Haste/Vers or 1% Movement Speed, Health/Mana regen etc.

With how quick Shadowlands leveling is, the current trees feel quite nice while questing 10-50. You get a point every couple hours playtime that (mostly) give big power spikes. Post Shadowlands I can see it becoming bland again.

[Zakaryy]

People forget that its not 2004 anymore. The game is not new. There's nothing worse about using a point system just to get marginal % increases on 1 spell at a time.
It works for classic, because it's classic. People beg for choice yet use the same builds as everybody else, that same builds they find on the internet.

Using the talent choice we have now and the random choice of trait system works better. It's less cookie cutter and has continuation for when you are still gearing.

If they modernize the talent trees, it could totally work. If they even thought about bringing back part of the trees from class artifacts weapons and the whole azerite skills into a new tree.
Doesn't make sense some of our characters "forget" these skills, some are tied to the weapons power itself, but some classes got the skills as talents anyway? and the whole Azerite is never going to go away canonically. They need a blend of past expansions instead of a swap in swap out like how we're going to be moving on from Azerite to SL covenants.

[Aeriedk]

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

I have never actually heard this as the reason they did away with talent trees.

If I recall correctly is was mainly because of "cookie-cutter" builds. They wanted people to have more options which was why they adopted the new talent system.

[Eosia]

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

Source. /ten

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I have never actually heard this as the reason they did away with talent trees.

If I recall correctly is was mainly because of "cookie-cutter" builds. They wanted people to have more options which was why they adopted the new talent system.

No, it was because they would have to constantly redesign them when we find combinations they do not like leading to nerfs like the 40/21/0 BM Nerf in 3.1.

[MeTaL GuArD]

I feel like what people REALLY want are not specifically Vanilla talent trees, but rather just SOMETHING to put points into that feels like you're progressing your character itself, beyond swapping a set of bracers for better ones or upgrading some external power. I liked Artifacts from Legion for this reason(aside from the spec-switching problems of course) - it kind of sated that ARPG craving of putting points into skills for me.

[Thundering]

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?

Becouse that requires them to do something good, that does not happen in retail.

[Aeriedk]

Source. /ten

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No, it was because they would have to constantly redesign them when we find combinations they do not like leading to nerfs like the 40/21/0 BM Nerf in 3.1.

Don't they do this now? Maybe not redesign but adjusting tuning etc which is largely what they did before.

[Eosia]

Don't they do this now? Maybe not redesign but adjusting tuning etc which is largely what they did before.

But that happens so few and far between versus the trees. They would need to have 180+ new talents ready to go every expansion.

And people forget the trees had a lot of filler crap like "X ability does 1%/2%/3% more damage". They baked that crap in.

[Chat]

simply put, we're going back to 60. Not Vanilla or BC.

[Jinpachi]

Old talent trees are bad and Classic has proven that beyond doubt.

90% of the tree is pointless trash like +1 str, and then the rest are mandatory things you have to take to perform well. Old talent trees bring nothing positive in and just confuse the newbies. Oh, and the "choice" is also much more real now because you often find yourself switching between movement abilities in the new talent rows. Back with the trees 99,99% of people were just running with the same stuff.

It was an illusion of choice, not actual choice.

^This right here. We could get really funky and add ability procs to gems in addition to the stat bonuses, much like trinkets are now. It'd be like azerite armor for all of your slots. Or we could just use that armor system for all armor/weapons and have them socketable. seems like they have the tech already in place to do something like that

[kenn9530]

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?

Talent trees are just as pointless it just gives you the illusion of choice when you actually dont have any, there will be one ideal PvE setup and one ideal PvP setup and anything inbetween is not optimal, it just brings in another way that you would have to constantly change your talents if your stepping in a little of all content.

[Vampyrr]

The old talent trees were hot garbage the new system works a lot better as it removes the bloaty fluff talents of 1% crit x5 and such and is filled with choices that change your playstyle.