Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Khaza-R]

https://twitter.com/keyboardturn/sta...JZsJwvDVw&s=19

Ve'nari apparently faked her death and is now travelling the cosmos with the dude from the SL preorder set quest.

Kind of cool but would of been nice to see more of Xolartios in the story if they were going to connect those plot points. But w/e at this point. Shadowlands gonna be Shadowlands.

[Nymrohd]

Finally we are getting something!

https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic...alent-preview/

[Makorus]

First preview for the Talent Trees are up.

Can't really pass judgment as I don't play either of the classes, but we are starting to get info now.

[Lady Atia]

I literally cannot comprehend this rationale.
How is that a critique? The difference between both of these options is that one is richer in content than the other. Are we arguing that they give us less? Why?
Allied races don't detract from customizations, they're a more complete form of them.
It's one thing to accept that resources are finite and that we can't always get everything. To accept one skin tone and one eye color as what can be done in this moment and better than nothing. But to actively be against getting more than that I don't understand.
If the things we wish for this game are on the basis of "need", then there's not really a need for most of it. Give us a faceless grey humanoid shape and we'll roleplay as whatever we want I guess. No "need" to flesh out visual and lore identities in the game, we'll just headcanon it.

The rationale is that people rather get something like Vulperas or Zandalari than Highmountain Tauren. And in the end, you have these options:

1) Getting unique new Races like Dracthyr
2) Getting unique Allied Races like Vulpera
3) Getting Allied Races like Highmountain Tauren which forces you to pay for a race change although they could just be customizations
4) Getting unique customizations that allow you to play a new race via an old one
5) Getting nothing

At the end of the day, looks are more important than gameplay for me, so I couldn't care less if I have unique racials if I can get more races to play in the end. I don't have the game to tell me I'm a high elf/sandtroll/darkfallen/wildhammer dwarf in order to be one. And all of these options are canon.

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First preview for the Talent Trees are up.

Can't really pass judgment as I don't play either of the classes, but we are starting to get info now.

Great to see Convoke made the cut. What's funny though is that Death Knights didn't get any of the Shadowlands Covenant abilities, it seems? RIP grabby hands.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Good to see some info again, seems things are heating up. I am expecting more the following weeks. Big Preorder period coming up.

[Lady Atia]

Good to see some info again, seems things are heating up. I am expecting more the following weeks. Big Preorder period coming up.

Yeah, we are in the end game now. Depending on how fast they drop the other talent trees I could see Alpha launching in the next 2-4 weeks easily.

[rhorle]

The talents still seem like the illusion of choice where min/max paths will still be the community default based on guides. Hopefully they can keep all the options and paths balanced so there are no bad choices. There is nothing inherent wrong with that illusion but if it takes resources away from the rest of the game to maintain I think i'd prefer the old way. Just give us small "borrowed power" each expansion that are similar to this system and the Shadowlands soulbinds.

I also wonder how this will impact future expansions that keep adding new branches and abilities. Right now it is easy to populate it by including things from the borrowed power systems they are not longer using but eventually it seems like it would become a nightmare to balance. Though they can just squish or redo everything every few expansions.

[Lady Atia]

https://twitter.com/keyboardturn/sta...JZsJwvDVw&s=19

Ve'nari apparently faked her death and is now travelling the cosmos with the dude from the SL preorder set quest.

Wait, this is huge news! I always thought it was weird that we never saw the Eternal Travelers within the Shadowlands. Seems like they kinda fixed that plothole for now?

[Sondrelk]

Great to see Convoke made the cut. What's funny though is that Death Knights didn't get any of the Shadowlands Covenant abilities, it seems? RIP grabby hands.

Abonnement nation limb is right there in the DK tree. It's just not in any one spec tree.

[Lady Atia]

The talents still seem like the illusion of choice where min/max paths will still be the community default based on guides. Hopefully they can keep all the options and paths balanced so there are no bad choices. There is nothing inherent wrong with that illusion but if it takes resources away from the rest of the game to maintain I think i'd prefer the old way. Just give us small "borrowed power" each expansion that are similar to this system and the Shadowlands soulbinds.

I also wonder how this will impact future expansions that keep adding new branches and abilities. Right now it is easy to populate it by including things from the borrowed power systems they are not longer using but eventually it seems like it would become a nightmare to balance. Though they can just squish or redo everything every few expansions.

What the new talent system has is the potential to have unique builds for every raid boss and every Dungeon though, which sounds great on paper and requires quite a higher skill cap as you would have to play more playstyles.

And the new system is build to last a few expansions so I would guess they already have plans on how to expand the trees.

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Abonnement nation limb is right there in the DK tree. It's just not in any one spec tree.

Ahhhh, true! For some reason I didn't see the basic dk trees talents in the post lol.

[Foolicious]

First preview for the Talent Trees are up.

Can't really pass judgment as I don't play either of the classes, but we are starting to get info now.

God thats awful to read.
Hope wowhead is quick in making a calculator.

Nothing major stands out immediately. Convoke and adaptive swarm for druids, abo limb for dk.

[Valysar]

Druid and DK for now, hope the rest is coming soon

[rhorle]

What the new talent system has is the potential to have unique builds for every raid boss and every Dungeon though, which sounds great on paper and requires quite a higher skill cap as you would have to play more playstyles.

That really remains to be seen. For the hardcore min/maxers? Sure. But for the community at large? How many will really change just for the few extra dps/hps or tank survival. Sure having loadouts for easy change will make that easier but higher skill cap really just means more balance issues. They've talked about this in the past and how perception and community pressure really makes skill gaps are net negative for the game. It again is hard to balance such gaps with out alienating the skilled or un-skilled in the process. There shouldn't be a "hard mode" specialization for any class so any skill to playing a class is hard to balance.

[Blayze]

The talents still seem like the illusion of choice

Even more so when it comes to having to spec into your interrupts.

[therumblings]

illusion of choice with cookie cutter builds > cookie cutter builds without illusion of choice

[infinitemeridian]

I guess I'm confused - this seems to be simply taking a lot of functionality away from existing specs / classes and not really adding much else. So a massive prune.

[Makabreska]

Even more so when it comes to having to spec into your interrupts.

Not much of an issue, if you have to spent literally single point to get it in DK case. They did say that things like interrupts will be very easy to get.

[Nightshade711]

Interested to see the talent calculators and what spells are baseline without talents.

What’s interesting is the ghoul being a talent, so it looks like you could run Unholy without a ghoul.

[Makabreska]

I guess I'm confused - this seems to be simply taking a lot of functionality away from existing specs / classes and not really adding much else. So a massive prune.

What massive prune? You get 61 points to spend there.

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Interested to see the talent calculators and what spells are baseline without talents.

What’s interesting is the ghoul being a talent, so it looks like you could run Unholy without a ghoul.

Uh, no. These first row talents are automatically taken if you pick certain spec.

[micwini]

Looks like they're adding some stuff back as well. Mark of the Wild!! Hoping paladin blessings will make their return. Bit worried about should-be-baseline spells being talents, like dispells and interrupts.