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

[Advent]

But again, that's the whole point of these new trees. Hybrid builds for folks who want to mix and match baseline abilities from different specialties.

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I would be in favor of limited presets and/or locking the set to the raid, for example whatever set you used to kill the first boss is now locked for the rest of the instance. So to say, whatever set you are using at the point you are locked to the instance, is also locked to the instance.

I'm not going to lie to you.

That sounds positively awful.

"Sorry guys I can't help with cleaving adds, I went full single target build for the first boss."

[Ragedaug]

I'm not going to lie to you.

That sounds positively awful.

"Sorry guys I can't help with cleaving adds, I went full single target build for the first boss."

Eh, I think the alternative is worse, having to make a different preset for every boss and various trash pulls.

I think the idea you are missing is that you wouldn't make a build specific to the first boss. You would make a build specific to the dungeon. Meaning you have to pick and choose what to focus on and what to sacrifice to help with the overall run.

If you have the first 4 bosses on farm but are still progressing on the 5th boss, you might make a build specific to the 5th boss. There are still options, you just have to figure out what you want to do before hand, knowing you wouldn't be able to change it between bosses.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Locking would be awful!

I think this is the issue with offering people too many choices. They even addressed it in their post about letting people make bad builds.

Well, the issue is that every time you add a choice, you are also adding in a new knowledge component and a way for good players to get that much better than bad players. In other words, if there were 0 choices whatsoever, the only difference between player A and player B would be how skillfully they use the stuff they have. Every choice you add here, from consumables to enchants to talents to etc etc you grow this potential gap.

That isn't to say that choices are bad, but sometimes when people talk about difficulty here I think they underestimate how much this stuff matters in the aggregate. You'll sometimes look at two different players who both copied stuff from icy veins, yet the one who is willing to change soulbinds/conduits/talents/enchants/gems etc on a boss to boss basis will actually be at a massive potential advantage.

[Ragedaug]

Locking would be awful!

I think this is the issue with offering people too many choices. They even addressed it in their post about letting people make bad builds.

Well, the issue is that every time you add a choice, you are also adding in a new knowledge component and a way for good players to get that much better than bad players. In other words, if there were 0 choices whatsoever, the only difference between player A and player B would be how skillfully they use the stuff they have. Every choice you add here, from consumables to enchants to talents to etc etc you grow this potential gap.

That isn't to say that choices are bad, but sometimes when people talk about difficulty here I think they underestimate how much this stuff matters in the aggregate. You'll sometimes look at two different players who both copied stuff from icy veins, yet the one who is willing to change soulbinds/conduits/talents/enchants/gems etc on a boss to boss basis will actually be at a massive potential advantage.

Seems very difficult to tune boss encounters if you can switch talents for every fight.

I think folks know the difference of having choices matter. meaning, folks know you don't do optimally if you go outside the cookie cutter. Folks aren't choosing their own builds to top meters. They are choosing their own builds so they can have more fun.

Seems odd to say "remove talents so that dumb people can't do worse". Let them play however they find it fun.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Seems very difficult to tune boss encounters if you can switch talents for every fight.

I think folks know the difference of having choices matter. meaning, folks know you don't do optimally if you go outside the cookie cutter. Folks aren't choosing their own builds to top meters. They are choosing their own builds so they can have more fun.

Seems odd to say "remove talents so that dumb people can't do worse". Let them play however they find it fun.

I didn't say that! Just saying there is an exponential growth curve in the gap between players the more choices you add, because folks will take the wrong ones.


And I dont know, I guess my anecdotal experience in mid to low tier guilds is that players actually have no idea what they are doing wrong, there's a lot of Dunning-Krueger going on lol

[Ragedaug]

I didn't say that! Just saying there is an exponential growth curve in the gap between players the more choices you add, because folks will take the wrong ones.

And I dont know, I guess my anecdotal experience in mid to low tier guilds is that players actually have no idea what they are doing wrong, there's a lot of Dunning-Krueger going on lol

I don't disagree with any of that. And I can admit I was being a little hyperbolic when I was paraphrasing you, but my point remains that there's a lot of folks out there that want to be able to set their own baseline abilities regardless of what that does to their DPS.

[Advent]

Eh, I think the alternative is worse, having to make a different preset for every boss and various trash pulls.

I think the idea you are missing is that you wouldn't make a build specific to the first boss. You would make a build specific to the dungeon. Meaning you have to pick and choose what to focus on and what to sacrifice to help with the overall run.

If you have the first 4 bosses on farm but are still progressing on the 5th boss, you might make a build specific to the 5th boss. There are still options, you just have to figure out what you want to do before hand, knowing you wouldn't be able to change it between bosses.

I don't think that's how people play the game, or how they want to play the game, at all. I know I don't anymore.

[Clozer]

Starting from the middle with different branches for different aspects of the spec would be cool. Branches close to eachother would connect etc. This would result in a lot more possibilities.

This is the same old top-down tree where you are locked in a few starting talents no matter what.

[FAILoZOFF]

I was fine with each spec being very "samey" to each other, picking up talents based on given fight or arena comp doesn't ring right bells to be.

[Maxilian]

Me neither, but in the end, this changes are not for everyone, most people will just look up the best talents for your subclass and stick with those (me being one of those), so its only for that group of people that are full into raiding and, mainly, PVP as they can take more advantage of the options depending what they are fighting.

[MCitra]

There has never been room for creativity in any talent system if you are min/max'ing. There's only ever one best path. In the original talents. In the revamped Cata talents, and in the new talents.

The question is, do the talents give you room for creativity if you want to do something different even though it's suboptimal? I think many would argue that the original talents did this, and the new talents do this. The Cata+ talents did not give you creative control to hybrid.

Personally, I like the idea of dinging a new level and being able to put a point in your tree for increased power or ability. Feels better, even if those points are spent on predestined talents.

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I think this is the idea of why they changed the trees. They can't give you all your basic abilities and passives baseline AND give you hybrid talents. So with the new tree, you can choose hybrid talents over your spec's normal talents.

Getting one new talent each level felt more meaningful than loot on m+ now days

In wotlk you could easily spot someone who put effort into their game by watching the talents and enchants in another way than now but now people call it elitist. I dont think it matters what blizzard does ingame with wow there will always be some way that is better for that class and spec and something for every player to chase.


How ever i am not a fan of this new tree being pld school playing all expansions. I find them disapointing and to many base abilitys into talents instead of making something new.

Maybe we will see a rework after DF who knows

[pastar]

icyviens get build gg go next

[InfiniteCharger]

The problem is precisely that it is "old talents" coming back because they haven't added any new talents or abilities in the last few expansions. Also after numerous rounds of level squishing, we are losing 60 levels worth of talent points, on top of the fact they stopped adding new talent rows after WOD. So it is ultimately a reskin and rehash of what was already there and not actually providing anything new.

It is just a band aid to avoid the core problem being to come up with a new way to have character ability and power progression not strictly tied to leveling. If they really wanted to take a stab at it, they would have made this the "baseline tree" up to level 30 or 40 and then have new "enhanced trees" based on some other form of progression based on new game play mechanics. You could have hidden trees based on achievements unlocked in an expansion, you could new forms of progression currency for specific trees. There is a lot they could do but they avoided all that and just reskinned the same old talents and abilities that have been in the game for years.