Proof that old Talents promoted more originality from players

[Snufflupagus]

You can look at current frost dk covs to prove my point about how there's usually a number 1 and a number 2, based on content.

Yes, but that doesn’t invalidate his point. Basic math says that in a system with four options if everyone just chooses what they like best and what they like best is completely random, we’d expect to see 25%/25%/25%/25%.

If what they like best isn’t completely random, i.e because Necrolord is clearly the DK covenant and Night Fae are even more clearly the druid covenant, we expect to see the numbers distorted in that direction: people choosing what covenant they like best are likely to pick Night Fae even if they’re not min-maxing because it’s thematically appropriate.

The point is that we can’t calculate “everyone is min-maxing” based on the absolute percentage of people who are in the “best” covenant (or even the best three covenants). We have to consider that up to 25% of each class and quite possibly more in some cases are expected to be in each covenant just because they like it. So:

Necro sits at 60.8%. It was the best cov for pvp and pve. Now its still the best for pvp, still the best on high movement fights and pug encounters.

Nightfae sits at 26.8%. If you have an organized group that plays well, or cleave fights, this is the best and uve seen it climb up do to this.

Venth sits allt the way 7.8%. It was the best cov for blood so ull have a lot of offsets included in this number.

Bottom is kyrian at 5.1%. Best blood cov now but only under ideal conditions.

Okay, so 60% necro minus 25% who we expect to pick it randomly leaves 35% who picked because it’s the best choice (or less —necro is obviously thematically “the” DK covenant). 26% night fae basically fits into the amount we’d expect to pick randomly, leaving 1% who’ve picked for min-max reasons (although to be fair it’s probably more than that—no DK can really think night fae are thematically appropriate so non-min-maxers would look elsewhere, probably evening out the necrolord bulge a bit) 8% venthyr, 5% kyrian—necrolord success had to come from somewhere, they’ve clearly cannibalised venth and kyr. So that leaves us with 25% of necro, 8% venth and 5% kyr choosing based on what they like: 38% of total players (plus a few night fae, probably), which tells us in fact only about 62% of DKs are min-maxing. A majority for sure, but not an overwhelming majority.

Let's look at resto druids. Best raid cov is nightfae. They are 69.2%. Best m+ cov is necro. Necro is 25.6% kyrian is 3.3 and venth 1.9.

That’s about the same breakdown, with the caveat that Night Fae are even better aligned thematically with druids. So we have at least 25% night fae picking what they like, maybe 15% of necro (we could call it the full 25% and observe they’re right in line with random distribution but I feel like few druid players would feel especially aligned with necro), 3% venth and 2% kyr, giving us 45%ish of people picking what they like and something like 55-65% min-maxing.

As we’ve discussed, DK and druid (and Paladin) have the problem of distorting the statistics because they have strong themes that would distort the random distribution even if there was a random distribution. Your third example is incredibly useful in that respect because I don’t think mage aligns perfectly with any covenant and we really can expect non min-maxers picking whatever covenant they like to achieve a fairly random distribution.

The 3rd class I play is arcane mage. Kyrian is best in raid and m+. It is 51.9%. Nightfae is best in pvp, and is the cov the other 2 specs use the most, its 26.7%. That leaves the other 2 combining for 21.4%.

So we have 52% kyr, 26% night fae and 21% necro and venth. That’s actually pretty much what we’d anticipate: the covenants trend towards 25% each and the best one dominates. In total though that only gives us 27% min-maxing with Kyrian (the other 25% we expect to pick Kyrian anyway if they were picking what they liked) and maybe 1% with night fae. That leaves us with 28% of mage players min-maxing and a whopping 72% picking covenants they like.

That’s probably not quite right either, but all of this math is pretty sketchy. It’s clear though that we’re talking about far less than 90% of players taking cookie cutter choices; even with the massive distorting effect of druids’ cookie cutter choice also being “the druid covenant” they didn’t get more than 65% of people making the cookie cutter choice. 65% is a majority, but it’s not 90%. In cases like mage where we expect more randomness in choice because any covenant can thematically fit, we actually see quite an even distribution with relatively little distortion toward the cookie cutter choice.

It is more often than not more than just 35% min maxing. Its 80+% of players happen to be in 1 or the other covenant thats best for their content. Then you have covs that are more flexible for offspeccing, and a million other reasons. There are many more ppl min maxing than those that aren't.

TL;DR: even if everyone was picking covenants at random you would have to expect each covenant to get 1/4 of all players (25%), so when calculating how many people have chosen to min-max you need to take out 25% we would expect to pick it whether it was best or not. This is amplified by classes like DK and druid who are thematically closely aligned with a specific covenant that’s also their best, so both RPers and min-maxers are disproportionately choosing the same covenant. If you account for that, we swiftly see that actually more like 60-65% of people are picking based on what’s best, which is borne out by looking at classes such as mage which has a very even split with relatively little weighting toward the best covenant.

[Finlandia WOAT]

I never said it wouldn't.
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Yes, you did..

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Compare to, say, a Rogue back in vanilla who's actual playstyle did change depending on what talents they chose, requiring completely different weapons and positioning in combat, as well as totally different rotations that were more than a change of one or two buttons.

I said it was less important to be there, especially with adds,
.

This is nonsense.

Dagger raid build uses Backstab to build combo points. If you don't take it, you're gimping yourself for no reason. This only makes sense if there were a choice between Improved Backstab and some other talent that would help with adds. There isn't- in Classic, Rogues don't have an AoE spell.

This choice IS present in current day Assassination Rogue, with Poison Bomb vs Crimson tempest. Which I pointed out and you ignored, for some reason.

Ah, I'm starting to see some of the problems you people are having. You think they're bringing the talents back exactly as they were then. Got it.
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Don't put words in my mouth.

My problem is you claimed the old talent system affected playstyle more than the current one. Your examples are laughable. I compared it to an example- Poison Bomb vs Crimson Tempest. Which you ignored.

But man, those legendary weapons in Legion were wicked awesome, huh?

I'd change the subject too, if I were you

[cparle87]

I just hope they allow us to make a large amount of talent templates with seemless switching between those templates (enabled by a tome or in a rest area w/e). The only way I can see the new system being inferior compared to the current system is if it is annoying to deal with. It's not like the current system enables a lot of choice so if the new system were to lead to cookie cutter builds it would at least be comparable to what we have right now.



The problem of varying power level of different choices is only a problem if it is hard to switch between said choices. If a setup ist 5% worse in one situation than another one but 5% better in another one then it leads to a choice on what to focus on and variety. For example nowadays you hardly see people complain about the balancing of covenant abilities, because it's easy enough to switch between the covenants. And the builds he listed clearly had some kind of niche otherwise they would have never existed on such a big scale.

Nah. There was a thread this week about how BM was trash. Some folks were arguing it should be a bit lower cause it's so easy, others disagreeing.

[Skayth]

If my enhancement shaman can pick up a shield and become uncritable/def cap / whatever, time to bring back an old classic of shaman tank.

But I doubt they will do that or bring anything as amazing as such talents for classes in game. Even if they were subpar, they were still interesting and fun.

[Linkedblade]

If my enhancement shaman can pick up a shield and become uncritable/def cap / whatever, time to bring back an old classic of shaman tank.

But I doubt they will do that or bring anything as amazing as such talents for classes in game. Even if they were subpar, they were still interesting and fun.

I always had thought that shamans and warlocks would have been given tank specs. Shamans had a bunch of utilities that that made them tanks: shields, earth shock (?), the threat weapon enchant. Warlocks had that demon form for a bit but that was rolled into demon hunter.

[roldy27]

Nah. There was a thread this week about how BM was trash. Some folks were arguing it should be a bit lower cause it's so easy, others disagreeing.

Yeah because it didn't really have a niche and was much more than just 5% behind SV in a lot of situations. With the recent buffs it is now a competetive single target spec but in AoE/cleave it is more than 40% behind.

Even still BM is the second most played hunter spec in mythic sotfo. Considering the difference between bm and sv/mm was much more than 5% that is further proof that your statement that something is unplayable if it is only 5% behind is incorrect.

[cparle87]

Yeah because it didn't really have a niche and was much more than just 5% behind SV in a lot of situations. With the recent buffs it is now a competetive single target spec but in AoE/cleave it is more than 40% behind.

Even still BM is the second most played hunter spec in mythic sotfo. Considering the difference between bm and sv/mm was much more than 5% that is further proof that your statement that something is unplayable if it is only 5% behind is incorrect.

I didn't say anything about 5%, don't put words in my mouth.

[roldy27]

I didn't say anything about 5%, don't put words in my mouth.

We live in an age where a spec being 5% below the first spec is considered trash. There's the best and trash, nothing in between. Care to think about your comment again?

Are you sure?

[RayenDark]

Just because you had more options doesn't mean those options were good. You're either playing the Bis build for an encounter or you're gimping yourself and your team. "Originality" generally = sub par performance once way or another.

I don't care about having an "original" build. I care about performing the best I can with a given class/spec.

[Infinity Cubed]

Just because you had more options doesn't mean those options were good.

Just because you have fewer options doesn't mean those options are good.

It's like you almost got to the real point of the matter, but completely missed it.

[Ielenia]

<eats popcorn>

<goes to look at your counterarguments about how AMAZINGLY DIVERSE AND GAMECHANGING THE CURRENT TALENTS ARE HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS IT'S WAY BETTER THAN IT EVER WAS>

<watches you change one button your action bar>

<eats more popcorn>

Frost death knight.

Picking a talent set focused on either one of these two talents heavily changes your playstyle, your rotation:



Not to mention, Obliteration is better aimed at two-handed weapons, while Breath of Sindragosa is best suited for dual-wielding.

[craigw]

talent trees or not. everyone will copy the best rogue abilities, or the best shaman abilities. min/max is a thing and always will be.

[Beuargh]

it's a little bit like transmog. promote originality from players and watch how bad most of them look ;p

[Drench]

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BbgROZ9STY

Video features crazy player created specs from Wrath era:

-Honor Among Thieves Rogue
-AoE Fan of Knives interrupt and silence Rogue (pvp)
-Spell Power Enhancement Shaman
-Prot Holy Paladin (converting stamina into spell power...later changed to strength into spell power)
-Preg Pala (Prot Holy Ret Paladin)
-Necromancer caster ranged Deathknight (pvp)
-Dancing rune blood DK DPS (pre nerf)
-Arms Prot Tank Warrior
-Frostfire Mage

And there were many more player created inventions in specs some of which had to be nerfed.

Idk if you play at a high level but most classes have 3-6 different talent specs loadouts they use in pvp.

Honestly new system doesnt feel as good but when there isnt a ton of single op talents in a row its better.

The thing is tho your always only gonna use whats best unless your screwing around and that is only fun for a day or so.

So in the end they dont really even matter lol

[Cosmic Janitor]

Almost none of that would even work with the way the game it is today. As people have already summarized, either it relied on broken talents, broken scaling, was just flat out worse or relied on some extreme niche applications that you can still do today (or that don't exist today anymore in the first place). I actively hated most of those specs back then, because it just felt shit not getting key abilities in one spec because some mit tier center-piece was superior (demonic sacrifice is a good example). Today WoW also no longer has the mechanical depth (or more like quirkiness) to make some of the better niche specs shine. My fondest memories of niche builds is from the olden days of games before WoW where specializing in frost magic or piecing weapons was cool, because you could actuall do things others couldn't and respeccing wasn't an option - but I don't want to deal with something like that today anymore either..

[Echo of Soul]

Frost death knight.

Picking a talent set focused on either one of these two talents heavily changes your playstyle, your rotation:



Not to mention, Obliteration is better aimed at two-handed weapons, while Breath of Sindragosa is best suited for dual-wielding.

That shit is really cool. I miss the days where most classes had such diversity of choice.

[Theangryone]

You are free to use whatever build you want when doing your own thing. But you continue to delude yourself thinking the people forming the raids and rbgs are going to accept your builds. Just like in Wrath, there will be the numerically superior build and if you don’t use it you won’t get in. Gear Score was a thing. Inspection of talents, gems, and enchants was a thing. Will be again.

[exochaft]

The thing is tho your always only gonna use whats best unless your screwing around and that is only fun for a day or so.

So in the end they dont really even matter lol

I'll add a caveat or two because it really depends on the player.

Sure, people screw around to try out new things, but what is best is very subjective... ranging from the content you're doing to personal preference. The reality is that while there's a trend in the community to go towards one build, it's not always the best for everyone based upon your skill, latency, preferences, etc. The idea behind talents that are "obviously subpar" is that there's usually a trade-off involved of some kind: sometimes the ability is passive, sometimes it's easier to use than alternatives, sometimes it's more well-rounded in terms of what it can do compared to a more specialized option.

Without getting into the weeds too much, it's similar to raid strats that get handed down from the top guilds: people automatically assume they are the de facto best strats... but even the guilds who created the strats will tell you they are only optimized for their individual raid groups and may not be the best for everyone. This also extends to comps and talent builds. When I used to raid at that level, you'd be surprised how often people would experiment with different things that would be considered 'automatically dead talents' but would occasionally end up being amazing for what you're trying to do in your group.

Beyond niche DPS examples, a generalized situation is that your comp and the performance of your individuals will vary, and some talents and builds work better based upon how good or bad your group is. If you have a fight where adds that need to be killed, people may need to break the 'best' talent build to get better results. For example, if you have everyone spec into AoE damage builds, you may destroy the adds but lose a lot of single target DPS (and vice versa). The good guilds will search for that balance in their raid group, while the bad guilds will just copy and paste what the good guild does while wondering why they potentially struggle greatly while not realizing they need to tailor their strats/builds for their individual raid. I've seen so many guilds struggle until they appeal to an authority who finally tells them the reality: these strats were made for their individual guilds, you can use them as a guide, but they are not gospel and are meant to be changed for your needs.

Going a little further, while I provided a DPS example, sometimes it's not always about DPS but utility or support. While this tends to apply more often with hybrid classes, sometimes you can make builds that seem to be terrible DPS compared to the cookie-cutter spec, but you can make it work for your individual raid. This may shock people, but most raids don't have the best players in them, and you'll end up having weak links that you have to compensate for. This means that you may have to have your healers and tanks focus more on DPS while taking some survival hits, or you'll have DPS sacrifice DPS to perform healing or utility roles where the 'best' build can't allow the support role. At the end of the day, it's all about defeating the bosses and clearing the encounters, not adhering to the perceived meta.

Regardless, there is a problem that makes 'sub-par talents' an issue, and that's how Blizz currently tunes the raids and content. If you go back to vanilla, you had soooo much freedom in terms of who you could bring to the raid and the builds you could use, because it wasn't tuned to the highest degree. Nowadays, things are tuned so tightly that it actually stiffles the average person/guild from having as much flexibility as you did in the past. While you could class stack in the past, it generally wasn't necessary in the early years of WoW. Fast forward to today, many people feel like they're being punished if they don't pick the meta because of the insane increase in difficulty in content over time. Now, I'm not advocating to necessarily go back to vanilla levels of difficulty, but there should be a happy medium between the difficulty at the start of WoW to where we are now.

[Echo of Soul]

You are free to use whatever build you want when doing your own thing. But you continue to delude yourself thinking the people forming the raids and rbgs are going to accept your builds. Just like in Wrath, there will be the numerically superior build and if you don’t use it you won’t get in. Gear Score was a thing. Inspection of talents, gems, and enchants was a thing. Will be again.

Hmm, you couldn't inspect talents back then could you?

[Theangryone]

Hmm, you couldn't inspect talents back then could you?

Yes there were mods and addons that enabled you to do so. I remember being kicked more than once because of my build.