World of Warcraft: Dragonflight - Talent System Design Philosophy

[Chadow]

Oh fuck yes this is going to be a glorious shitshow. Just remember: You asked for this.

Yes i did Thanks Blizzard <3 love you

[jackofwind]

i dont get the point of the "general class" talent tree such as the Druid talent tree.
For example in that preview Druids have a talented spell called Typhoon that pretty much all specs would love, but its locked behind a ton of resto/balance Druid talents.

Why do cats/bears have to spend a ton of talent points on useless caster talents in the general Druid talent tree just to reach the Typhoon spell?
Really does not seem enjoyable...

Because it's obviously somewhat punishing to give Ferals Typhoon so they have to dump points that are hybrid utility sidegrades at best to get it?

It's really not hard to understand. You have the option to sink points to get Typhoon in this system as opposed to not even having that option under the old system.

[helusay]

Does anyone else think the "new talent trees" look a lot like the RIFT talent trees when they see them?

[Tziva]

If you're in a raiding guild with people who care even a moderate amount you won't need to because those players will have that shit already.

I think this is naive and simplistic in general, since plenty of good players might be aware those things are needed in a general level, but still might think that someone else should cover it. Good players can also be selfish (and to a degree, that is also what makes good players do well), especially if that point also competes with something else they want.

But that also assumes it is a choice they can reasonable make. If AMS and interrupt end up being mutually exclusive due to limited points, a good player might want both but still have to choose. That is still a loss when both those things can be had together now. That still feels shitty as a player, nevermind how it might impact actual raid fights.

And that's only looking at regular teams, and that's assuming good players. These talent changes affect everyone from LFR up to mythic, and both set groups and in PuGs. The assumption of people caring a moderate amount might already be asking a little much in some of the more casual groups, and PuGs have even less incentive to sacrifice what they want for strangers. It wouldn't be unsurprising to make a group only to find every person took the personal survival cooldown because "someone else can cover the interrupt."

Micromanaging these is going to be unavoidable on some level, regardless. Maybe everyone in my raid shows up with an interrupt, and maybe they don't give up something else that might have potentially helped us to get it, but I'm still going to have to decide which people need to surrender a point to take those talents that only one person needs to provide, etc.

Just the general idea of having to check and and assign talents as a group leader is obnoxious and would have been completely unnecessary if Blizzard had stuck to doing talents that didn't include core utility and survival stuff and instead focused on making new things or bringing back old expansion abilities from other systems, which I thought was the whole goal of returning to big trees.

[Biomega]

But that also assumes it is a choice they can reasonable make. If AMS and interrupt end up being mutually exclusive due to limited points, a good player might want both but still have to choose. That is still a loss when both those things can be had together now. That still feels shitty as a player, nevermind how it might impact actual raid fights.

It depends.

MEANINGFUL choices are good for the game. Things being mutually exclusive may be "worse" compared to you having it all, but ultimately it can be more fun to have to actually choose rather than to just have everything.

That being said, I don't think AMS vs. Interrupt is a good or meaningful choice. It's a pretty shit choice. Those aren't comparable, they're not even in the same ballpark. Choosing between those two is not going to add substantive meaning to your decision-making process, it's just going to be a case of "does this fight have something vital I must interrupt Y/N" or "does this fight have something vital I must block with AMS Y/N" which is EXACTLY the kind of shitty choice we have now with many talents, in the vein of "take A if it's a single-target fight, take B if it's an AoE fight".

Making good talent systems is damn difficult, and hard work. Just throwing random core utility in there on mutually exclusive paths isn't the easy solution some people think it to be.

Though to be fair we don't know yet how it'll ACTUALLY look.

[vincink]

Wonder how balance will be, seeing as they can't balance 7 choices properly...

Were talent trees ever balanced in the past? (Not accusing you for suggesting that but genuinely wondering. I don't recall talent trees of the past being balanced. There was always a flavor of the month class+talent configuration, as I recall.)

[Tziva]

It depends.

MEANINGFUL choices are good for the game. Things being mutually exclusive may be "worse" compared to you having it all, but ultimately it can be more fun to have to actually choose rather than to just have everything.

I don't disagree, but obviously what is "meaningful" and a good type of choice is subjective.

I personally like the approach to meaningful choice where your choice is either situational ("do I want AoE talent for this fight, or do I want single target talent for this fight") or active vs. passive ("do I want an active ability that is slightly better dps or is it better to just pick a passive because this is an alt I'm not as good with") type choices. If they can balance actual throughput choices against each other so there isn't one exclusive right answer, I also love actual gameplay impacting choices ("do I want to add a DoT to my rotation or a short burst cooldown"), but these kinds usually end up where there is only one correct choice mathematically.

I am sure there are others who think choosing between utility and survival is a good choice. I'm sure there are also people who think choosing between utility and throughput is good choice. I strongly disagree but the point is that there are perspectives of all type.

My beef with the new talents is entirely within the act of taking current baseline abilities and making them into talents that are locked behind a finite currency. I don't think it's smart, I don't think it's fun, I don't think it's interesting to put players in a position where they might potentially have to give up utility and survival abilities they have now.

Though to be fair we don't know yet how it'll ACTUALLY look.

I mean, we have a pretty reasonable idea now that they've released two in-depth previews and several small ones. We can hope they might change in response to feedback, but Blizzard also likes to die on dumb hills, so that seems credulous at this point.

[Biomega]

I mean, we have a pretty reasonable idea now that they've released two in-depth previews and several small ones. We can hope they might change in response to feedback, but Blizzard also likes to die on dumb hills, so that seems credulous at this point.

We have a general idea, but we don't know the details. We don't know what is baseline and what isn't, what specific abilities are positioned against each other, etc.

Those matter a lot.

I share your pessimism - I fully expect this to end up in a miserable state. But we don't know for sure yet.

[SinR]

"Dude you have zero interrupts"

"Sorry I'm not specced into Wind Shear"

kek

[Tziva]

We have a general idea, but we don't know the details. We don't know what is baseline and what isn't, what specific abilities are positioned against each other, etc.

Those matter a lot.

I share your pessimism - I fully expect this to end up in a miserable state. But we don't know for sure yet.

At this point, I'm going to assume you missed the DK and Druid previews they put out today with this blog post. We know those things for at least two classes now, at least as they are currently working.

(they've also indicated elsewhere some of the current baseline abilities that will be moving to talents for most classes, interrupts being one of those)

[Biomega]

At this point, I'm going to assume you missed the DK and Druid previews they put out today with this blog post. We know those things for at least two classes now, at least as they are currently working.

(they've also indicated elsewhere some of the current baseline abilities that will be moving to talents for most classes, interrupts being one of those)

Yes, but those are only two classes, and it's in a pre-Alpha state.

Until it gets closer to being release ready we have no idea what it'll ACTUALLY look like.

I do expect it to be shit going by what we do know, but I won't judge it until it's closer to finalized than it is right now.

[Slybak]

At this point, I'm going to assume you missed the DK and Druid previews they put out today with this blog post. We know those things for at least two classes now, at least as they are currently working.

(they've also indicated elsewhere some of the current baseline abilities that will be moving to talents for most classes, interrupts being one of those)

Mind Freeze is low enough in the Frost "branch" of the DK's class tree to not be any kind of major point sink for Blood/Unholy. Skull Bash is higher up in the Feral/Guardian branches for Druids but still pretty central, and it basically lets Resto/Balance spec into it in exchange for giving up Heart of the Wild.

In other words their placement is such that a standard raid group is very likely going to have the same number of interrupts as it does now, but it allows for a greater degree of flexibility for some classes in smaller group context like M+ where opportunity costs play a larger role in choices. Overall I think that's a positive *direction*, with the addendum that "early draft is early" and the final destination is going to be different in significant ways.

[StillMcfuu]

These don't look too bad, but it would have been great if a calculator went live with it. So we could play and see what a build with 61pts in it looks like and what skills you can get.

[Slybak]

It depends.

MEANINGFUL choices are good for the game. Things being mutually exclusive may be "worse" compared to you having it all, but ultimately it can be more fun to have to actually choose rather than to just have everything.

That being said, I don't think AMS vs. Interrupt is a good or meaningful choice. It's a pretty shit choice. Those aren't comparable, they're not even in the same ballpark. Choosing between those two is not going to add substantive meaning to your decision-making process, it's just going to be a case of "does this fight have something vital I must interrupt Y/N" or "does this fight have something vital I must block with AMS Y/N" which is EXACTLY the kind of shitty choice we have now with many talents, in the vein of "take A if it's a single-target fight, take B if it's an AoE fight".

I'm running through the DK tree and its actually pretty hard *not* to have both Mind Freeze and AMS. You basically have to be some sort of very weird and exclusive Frost/Unholy or Blood/Unholy hybrid that stops you from spending 2 points in the remaining "Branch".

[ImpalerEU]

Let the tears begin!

I can see self-proclaimed experts and Doomsayers with permanent semi-annual subscriptions spreading mental illness as usual.

[Celvira]

My goal is to make the worst build possible to show Blizzard how terrible this revamp is going to be on a larger scale. We shouldn't have to invest points into abilities that are critical to activity-specific performance (i.e interrupts or defensives) just to falsely advertise that we have "more choice" in regards to talents.

We don't have a choice in the matter. If we don't pick up our interrupts or critical defensives, we won't be able to find groups for mythic or land a spot in a raid roster. Don't desecrate our baseline abilities in the name of "freedom".

[SinR]

I still think Interrupts need to be a class baseline ability

[ImpalerEU]

Oh fuck yes this is going to be a glorious shitshow. Just remember: You asked for this.

Yes, because you will finally need to be sober to operate these new talents.

[Twdft]

We don't have a choice in the matter. If we don't pick up our interrupts or critical defensives, we won't be able to find groups for mythic or land a spot in a raid roster. Don't desecrate our baseline abilities in the name of "freedom".

Are you not looking forward to spending 58 cookie cutter points just the same as every other char of your spec with 3 points in different utility spells?

[ImpalerEU]

My goal is to make the worst build possible to show Blizzard how terrible this revamp is going to be on a larger scale. We shouldn't have to invest points into abilities that are critical to activity-specific performance (i.e interrupts or defensives) just to falsely advertise that we have "more choice" in regards to talents.

We don't have a choice in the matter. If we don't pick up our interrupts or critical defensives, we won't be able to find groups for mythic or land a spot in a raid roster. Don't desecrate our baseline abilities in the name of "freedom".

An environment where everyone has everything isn't exactly ideal or fun. It's boring, and more drunkard friendly.
It is much more fun to change depending on what you plan to do.

Though seeing how the MoP (and beyond) talents cater more towards the heavily intoxicated, it's hard to go back for some.