Being assertive is NOT trolling. It's alarming how many people (including moderators) still have not got that memo.
If I invite someone and they have all the right talents they at least know what their abilities do, they at least spent the 5 seconds it takes to look up a build to do good damage. Can they still be bad? Sure. But there's at least a decent chance they have a small understanding of their class.
If I invite someone and they have all the wrong talents that they picked at random it means they have no idea what they're doing. There's a 99% chance they're going to be literal dead weight.
Personally I wouldn't even consider doing content with someone running some troll build. They're going to be bad players, they're almost certainly going to be obnoxious players, and it's not going to be a fun experience in any way.
I'm just going to break them down, because i think some are just unfair to count as a "special spec".
Basically, one OP talent that suddenly turned a spec around.
Remember that Rogue talent in BfA which allowed sub rogues to funnel AoE Dps into one target, Shuriken Storm?
Yeah, that was OP as fuck and got nerfed, just wasn't an extra talent.
And that's what Honor among Thieves and AoE Interrupt FoK were as well, they turned a mediocre spec (Sub in PvE; Combat in PvP) into a powerhouse by the virtue of one talent.
I mean, c'mon, Honor among Thieves pre nerf basically turned Rogue into a one button class, all you have to do is press Slice and Dice and then spam Eviscerate until SnD drops off.
Not a special spec, just depends on scripting of Wotlk.
The talents were the same as regular Enhance afaik, you just stacked Spellpower instead of regular Hunter / Enhance gear.
If anything, it was a gear / spell interaction thing, not so much a talent thing because Enhance did a ton of spelldamage in Wotlk by its design and Spellpower boosted Spelldamage.
The thing that changes drastically here is your choice of gearing, not necessarily the playstyle.
Fair, but again, was largely just a single talent enabling it.
Also, can we count "special specs" by the virtue of one talent that was so OP that it already got nerfed mid Wotlk and thus won't even exist in Classic Wotlk?
Fair, but afaik is mostly seen as a BG spec, not so much Arena, let alone PvE.
Again, you didn't pick a particular talent combination, you just went with a regular PvP deep Unholy build and pressed Death Coil when you weren't in range of your target and had Runic Power to spare, not like you could spent it on much else during that time.
Nevermind that Death Coil was the regular Runic power spender for Unholy.
Again, one OP talent, that's not a particular special spec.
By that virtue, you could count every single DK spec, such as Unholy Tank, Blood Dps is generally the most famous one because that was the Meta Build at one point but then Blood transistioned into a tank spec in 3.2 / 3.3.
Only one i would 100% count.
- You went for a true hybrid build (halfway down Arms, halfway down Prot)
- Wasn't OP by just one talent, required synergy from multiple ones (Unrelenting Assault, imp. Revenge, Glyph of Revenge)
- Wasn't that broken that Blizzard nerfed it
- Had a clear niche (mostly AoE tanking in dungeons)
- Clear trade off (trading defensive talents for damage / threat talents)
Existed in theory but never really took off.
The concept of it was to pick up the benefit of both Frost and Fire talents, but unfortunately it was generally better to just stick to one tree and go all the way down.
Might've worked if cast time reduction for Frostfire bolt existed and Brain Freeze had been way up in the Frost tree, with the current 3.3.5 talents, you can't pick up Brain Freeze and any solid talents in Fire.
I never had a problem on the meters in TBC/Wrath with my personal Demo builds that were not the cookie cutter ones. Was I blowing everyone out of the water? Not typically, but on some fights I could easily obliterate everyone else if the mechanics were favorable to the build.
Of course, I did get lots of shit from people who told me not to use the spec I did, even as I out-damaged them. I would literally be out-damaging someone while they spammed me for using a bad spec.
And those are the type of people wow is made for now.
"stop puting you idiotic liberal words into my mouth"
-ynnady
Lol come on now really? "Proof told talents promote more originality"
Honor among thieves was bugged, that's why it worked, come on now, its literally in the first 2 minutes of the party.
also nothing about this build had anything to do with "talent trees" it could literally be a talent these days, it wasnt some "gimicky" build.
like seriously how is this proof they provided more originality, when most of these builds were literally just... normal builds, going entirely down 1 whole tree.
the prot pally again was not some "odd made build" it was literally deep dive into prot pally... thats it...
you could do this stuff these days, very few if ANY of these builds actually require old talent trees, because these builds you have listed are almost all entirely "go deep into this 1 spec... thats it."
The only way old talent tree was unique was the abiltiy to go partially into multiple trees, if those builds were super good then you would have a point, but few if any of them were.
The DK was the only real one here, but that was because the spec itself was broken as fuck at launch. a lot of these builds were not good because they were original, but they were good because they were obscenely broken or bugged.
People were blissfully uninformed back then. Today nobody would intentionally play a spec that performs 2% worse.
I think ppl also forget that for the most part, 90% of the talents were the same if you wanted to actually perform decently, and there were maybe 2 or 3 actual choices you'd make after that. Those 90% that were the same are just the passives baked into the skill book now, or skills u get automatically for picking your spec now, like mortal strike and sweeping strikes. The choice you did end up picking was like do I want gouge to last 0.5 sec longer, or give kick a 50% chance to silence a target for 2 seconds.
Now you've got 7 talent rows. You get to make a choice at every row. Arguably its not much better because there's usually a best pick depending on which content you're doing. But at least it changes (and easily) depending on the content unlike old talent where 1 build was basically locked in 100%. And now you've got some options to change out an active talent that might yield slightly more dps, with a passive one that eases up the rotation.
So my point is sure, you had more "variety" back then if you include vastly underperforming builds. And im sure turbo soloing casuals would prefer that. But if you only include builds that actually perform within 10% of the best build, then there is much more variety and choice today
FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..
This is objectively wrong.
Tanks, Paladin specifically, have 3 general specs. Raid Threat, PuG dungeons, and Guildie dungeons.
While the differences aren't massive, they are still highly noticeable.
I have a "farming rogue" that has stealth and vanish improvement talents. Just because I don't raid with it doesn't mean the talent build I chose doesn't serve its purpose better than a designated Raid spec.
Shadow's Embrace/Imp CoE warlocks say hi!
And I level using whatever I damn well please, optimal or not, and the various tweaks are enjoyable to use. Leveling as a drain-tank warlock can be just as entertaining as a DoT-n-Fear lock, or I can just break out the flaming shotgun and go Fire-Destro.
This is objectively more creativity and originality than anything retail WoW can offer.