I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of the old talents coming back.

[kansor]

My skepticism is about the cost in dev time. This looks like the biggest balance and design project in the new expansion. Why is it necessary?

The new talents may end up being a perfectly fine system in their own right, but what was wrong with the old system that justifies spending this time on a rework? Getting this means we don't get something else that they could do instead. As far as I can tell the current system wasn't causing any complaints, so the unnecessary rework could end up being project mismanagement.

Especially if it turns out the new system is mediocre and Blizz is left holding the ball.

[Foolicious]

However, I really don't think Blizzard will make utility compete with damage for this reason, so I'm not worried about that hypothetical scenario and I think this line of discussion is mostly irrelevant, but since you asked. That's why.

I mean we haven't seen anything yet so take this with a grain of salt. But ion said this in a recent interview. Seems like they realized the problem of utility vs. throughput too.

Recognizing that players will always choose increased performance over utility, separating talent points into two independent trees allows one to focus on the core role (i.e. Restoration), while the other to focuses on class-level (Druid) utility, movement, and control - you shouldn't have to give up damage or throughput for utility.

[Tziva]

Who really ?

I dont know who miss the old talent system, but i dont know anyone who miss +5% crit for 5 talent points kind of empty talents.

You can see a lot of them in this thread! Having read an ungodly number of posts on this site in my time working on MMOC, I can say it is consistently one of the things I see people claim to miss the most from past-WoW. Not saying it is everyone, not even saying it is a majority, but it is probably a fairly substantial minority.

I don't think what people miss is necessarily the specific talents so much as the general system of a tiered tree of many different talents. I think the new iteration will be a lot smarter than the old talent trees which, frankly, had a lot of talents that were total garbage at worst and bland at best.

While I don't really want the old style trees back, but I'm not really concerned that we are going to return to the days of wasting five talent points to get a 3% larger mana pool or whatever bullshit. Every indication is that the returning talent trees will largely consist of things we've seen in more recent systems, like conduits, artifact powers, neck essences, etc. All that is fine, but personally I am worried about the move of some abilities that are currently baseline into the talent trees instead, meaning people may have to sacrifice abilities they have now in order to get or build towards mandatory talents.

I mean we haven't seen anything yet so take this with a grain of salt. But ion said this in a recent interview. Seems like they realized the problem of utility vs. throughput too.

Yeah, like I said, I don't see it happening. Blizzard can be thickheaded sometimes, but not that much.

[Kithelle]

I'm hoping they're smart enough to not just return to the early talent system...spending points to get 5% more damage to a few abilities just isn't engaging. It only gives the illusion of choice and since there wont be any kind of hybridization that would make the talents even less interesting

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I personally miss picking talents every level. Gave me a sense of progression. I get that it all kind of happens in the background now but damn.. its nice to at least have the illusion of control a talent tree gives you. Because lets face it.. I get the feeling these trees will be designed to the point of you getting down to the end of a tree and having the same basic selections you have now at the end. You just have a road to travel down to get to them. Then they can also add to them in the future.

Truth be told if the current talent system grew between expansions I probably would be way good with it. But it just got really.. really dry and the same between expansions.

[Playintrafic]

It's the one thing I really hated about the DF announcement. The MoP talent trees were best, the changes in legion made it too complicated. But overall, i lvoe this system and I will sorely miss it. This is what happens when you listen to a bunch of Gen Z streamers who hate WoW and only talk about classic.

What legion changes?

Talents have been largely the same since MoP. WoD added a new row. Legion added nothing, changed nothing, save for some talents themselves. But it didnt change the system.

If you meant artifact weapons, that wasnt really a talent tree. it was a "get all the things after grinding" system.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Talent trees aren't an inherently good idea, like you make a talent tree and suddenly the game is better. It's all going to ride on the execution of the idea.

Feel like you can apply this to basically everything in the expansion lol

Execution is where rubber hits the road. Even some of the things people hate the most could have been perfectly find if they had rolled out differently.

[stross01]

I don't really like that every smooth thinks that this means more choice, more agency. This is an illusion of choice.

Pick what is best and run it or ride the bench. It doesn't matter if there are 5 talent points or 5000, it's the same 0 choice.

[Hctaz]

For me, unless the meta is based on ability or mechanic I loathe with all of my heart - I'll probably go with the guide build. BUT in case there is such a mechanic - the more complex the talent tree is - there is more viability for alternative options.

This is the way I feel as well. The way the MoP talents worked, there was little to no actual major gameplay changing mechanics involved with the talent choices. It was mostly just bonus stuff like taking a movement speed increase option or something along those lines. Maybe some CC types.

In Legion and onward, they really pushed towards having these very specific gameplay altering decisions that were made typically only in combination with one another. Stuff like the Frost DK in Nighthold is a good example where a lot of the talent choices came together to make a build.

I hope that we see more opportunities to make builds that might be slightly subpar compared to the min/max builds but are just overall more enjoyable to play instead of essentially being locked into a specific play style per spec. It's pretty much been the case that one playstyle is the only way you can play your class, and everything else is trash.

Or it could completely fail anyway, but I think this at least provides more of a chance than the old system.

[exochaft]

Talent trees aren't an inherently good idea, like you make a talent tree and suddenly the game is better. It's all going to ride on the execution of the idea.

That's the crux of any system in WoW: if it's not executed well, it won't be a good idea.

My biggest fear is that Blizz will pull a BfA, where they strip down the classes of their abilities/passives in order to make room for the new system. I wouldn't be surprised that the new talent trees will be filled with abilities and passives that are currently innate with your classes/specs, so without the talents you base class will be weak and/or not feel good. If not done correctly, you could actually feel like you have a weaker character after the talent tree implementation, as there's no guarantee that you'll keep everything you have now.

I haven't checked yet, but I've been told that interrupts may be a talent you need to choose. If that's the case (or similar for some baseline utilities in general), I can already see raids/M+ where there's fights over who has interrupts and who doesn't. Pugging scene could feel the effects of such a change... granted it'll depend on the level of raids/M+ as the use of interrupts/CCs will vary based upon said level, but I feel the average player raid/M+ will probably be the ones to feel such a change the most. Now, if there's a much less reliance on interrupts/CCs being needed, that could balance things out, but I highly doubt Blizz will move towards that.

[jayx10]

Talent trees aren't an inherently good idea, like you make a talent tree and suddenly the game is better. It's all going to ride on the execution of the idea.

holy fucking shit what a fucking retarded thing to say.

you can literally say that about anything in the fucking game. of course if something isn't designed well then it's going to be shit. you actually have your "thoughts" linked in your signature?? buddy you're a dumbass. no one is fucking interested in your takes on anything. fuck off

[Hctaz]

What legion changes?

Talents have been largely the same since MoP. WoD added a new row. Legion added nothing, changed nothing, save for some talents themselves. But it didnt change the system.

If you meant artifact weapons, that wasnt really a talent tree. it was a "get all the things after grinding" system.

Legion shifted the talents to being individual abilities per spec and giving you a ton of gameplay altering choices as opposed to MoP's system of primarily giving you choices between various movement abilities and CC options. There were some more complicated choices, but it was mostly down to very small changes in gameplay like choosing Runic Corruption versus Empowerment versus Blood Tap for DKs.

[Hctaz]

That's the crux of any system in WoW: if it's not executed well, it won't be a good idea.

My biggest fear is that Blizz will pull a BfA, where they strip down the classes of their abilities/passives in order to make room for the new system. I wouldn't be surprised that the new talent trees will be filled with abilities and passives that are currently innate with your classes/specs, so without the talents you base class will be weak and/or not feel good. If not done correctly, you could actually feel like you have a weaker character after the talent tree implementation, as there's no guarantee that you'll keep everything you have now.

I haven't checked yet, but I've been told that interrupts may be a talent you need to choose. If that's the case (or similar for some baseline utilities in general), I can already see raids/M+ where there's fights over who has interrupts and who doesn't. Pugging scene could feel the effects of such a change... granted it'll depend on the level of raids/M+ as the use of interrupts/CCs will vary based upon said level, but I feel the average player raid/M+ will probably be the ones to feel such a change the most. Now, if there's a much less reliance on interrupts/CCs being needed, that could balance things out, but I highly doubt Blizz will move towards that.

I honestly think we're getting WAAY too in depth with the analysis for something that we don't even have access to inspect currently.

I'm not of the mind of "It's Alpha, don't worry. It's Beta, don't worry," but I do think it's a little silly to give criticism when we effectively have nothing objective to criticize.
They mentioned that you would be able to select these abilities, but they didn't exactly say at what cost. It might just be fluff that wouldn't matter anyway like.. instead of taking an interrupt with Druid, you decide to put your last point into Regrowth. Why would you even do that, ya know? It doesn't sound like it's going to be a choice between an interrupt and a pivotal cooldown or ability, but I also could be incredibly mistaken since we literally have seen screenshots of a pre-Alpha talent calculator without said talent calculator actually showing any of the talent nodes aside from the icons.

I'll reserve my judgment for the day that they release full talent trees to the public, but I do agree that they need to be careful with the system or else it's going to be a nightmare.

[ro9ue]

holy fucking shit what a fucking retarded thing to say.

you can literally say that about anything in the fucking game. of course if something isn't designed well then it's going to be shit. you actually have your "thoughts" linked in your signature?? buddy you're a dumbass. no one is fucking interested in your takes on anything. fuck off

You would think it's obvious, but then you have people saying talent trees are good or talent trees are bad. Have to look at the context.

[pahbi]

Wow has 12 classes, each class has 3 talent trees except druid which has 4 and demon hunter that only has 2. That might as well be 36 different classes.

And the dev team is going to come up with 36 different talent trees?

You realize this is Blizz we're talking about here right? Blizz is still trying to balance the talent trees they pruned years and years ago.

I am missing something?

Is each class just going to have 1 massive talent tree? Instead of 3 different specs?

I just don't trust Blizz to be figure that out.

[kaminaris]

My biggest fear is that Blizz will pull a BfA, where they strip down the classes of their abilities/passives in order to make room for the new system. I wouldn't be surprised that the new talent trees will be filled with abilities and passives that are currently innate with your classes/specs, so without the talents you base class will be weak and/or not feel good. If not done correctly, you could actually feel like you have a weaker character after the talent tree implementation, as there's no guarantee that you'll keep everything you have now.

That is what Legion did, not BfA. What you felt at beginning of BfA was removal of all that shit legion put on items.

[Stricks]

To me it looked like more of a skill tree with talents baked in. It looked like the actual spells were learned like that.

[MidnyteTV]

What legion changes?

Talents have been largely the same since MoP. WoD added a new row. Legion added nothing, changed nothing, save for some talents themselves. But it didnt change the system.

If you meant artifact weapons, that wasnt really a talent tree. it was a "get all the things after grinding" system.

Look at the MoP talents vs the Legion talents. In MoP, the tree was the same throughout the spec, in Legion, each spec had a unique tree.

[Lahis]

Wow has 12 classes, each class has 3 talent trees except druid which has 4 and demon hunter that only has 2. That might as well be 36 different classes.

And the dev team is going to come up with 36 different talent trees?

You realize this is Blizz we're talking about here right? Blizz is still trying to balance the talent trees they pruned years and years ago.

I am missing something?

Is each class just going to have 1 massive talent tree? Instead of 3 different specs?

I just don't trust Blizz to be figure that out.

Each class will have one class talent tree and each spec will have their own spec tree.

So that's 13 class talent trees and 38 spec trees.

[Herald66]

I really like the new talent trees and hope we get a 2 month pre patch to have enough time for the set up. It seems there are many different ways to set the points in the talent trees, will be very interesting.