World of Warcraft: Dragonflight - Death Knight Talents and Abilities Preview

[Gorsameth]

Slightly underwhelmed.

While I hate how borrowed power systems result in a class that feels “incomplete” until you’ve leveled up (your already max level character) within that borrowed power system, I will say that, in the current state of Shadowlands, there’s actually a lot of room for kooky, creative builds within those systems.

Looking at blood, I don’t really feel like there’s a whole lot of room within the talent tree for more than a couple unique or interesting synergies.

Within the blood tree itself, there isn’t a lot of room to create an interesting build. And there aren’t a lot of synergies between any of the “talent tree” talents, and the baseline talent tree for all of DK’s.

That being said, this is just my feeling given a few minutes of reading.

As suspected, they're basically taking classes that have been in the same dumbed down state since Legion and locking your baseline abilities behind talent "choices". This is just comical.

Isn't that what the talent trees were before they were reimagined? What did people expect when they kept shouting they wanted the old talent trees back? You get the old tree mechanics.
There are good reasons why the game moved away from them in the first place.

[Pandragon]

They literally are choices, no quotation marks required.

Button and ability bloat is real and there's nothing wrong with getting to pick what you want. If you can choose the same shit you have now who cares, it just provides other people with other options.

There's no such thing as choice unless youre casual.

Example from Balance Tree:

Improved Eclipse [NNF]: Eclipse now reduces the cast time of affected spells by 15%.

Improved Moonfire and Sunfire [NNF]: Moonfire and Sunfire duration increased by [3/6] seconds. Two Rank Talent.

If Improved Eclipse does more overall damage than Improved Moonfire/Sunfire, then you will always take Eclipse. There's no choice in the matter.

Row 3:

Force of Nature: Summons a stand of 3 Treants for 10 sec which immediately taunt and attack enemies in the targeted area. Generates 20 Astral Power.

Nature's Balance: While in combat you generate [1/2] Astral Power every 2 seconds. While out of combat your Astral Power rebalances to 50 instead of depleting to empty. Two Rank Talent.

Warrior of Elune: Your next 3 Starfires are instant cast and generate 40% increased Astral Power.

This is exactly what Balance has now, Force is always taken for dungeons, Nature's Balance is always taken for raids, and Warrior is ignored cause it doesn't compete in damage or utility. No choice.

[jackofwind]

There's no such thing as choice unless youre casual.

And that's where you can stop, because the vast majority of people are casual - overwhelmingly so.

By even being on this website we're so far removed from actual casual players that we probably can't even comprehend how many casual players there are and just how casual those players actually are.

This doesn't even really make a difference for non-casuals except they have to pick and choose some different loadouts and maybe that's an annoyance to them - but it's not something that wouldn't be changing with a new expansion anyways. For casuals this means a shitload of them making the choices that they want to make, to play the way they want.

[Morae]

Yes it is, but you have to use just 2 general talent points to get it. It's on row 2, which means everyone can get it EASILY.
The icon on row 6 is just an upgrade, not the baseline kick.

Oh thats how it works. I was thinking, you can only start in one of the starting spots. That is if you start at the ghoul, you can't put points to the one at the frost side. I guess its ok that way.

[Goatfish]

Does anyone else think these look a bit like the RIFT talent trees when they see them?

I mean, RIFT talent trees were pretty interesting and allowed a lot of build diversity. It's kinda hard to tell at this point, but it looks more like they did some heavy pruning of base abilities and added them to talents instead to make it feel like you were getting a bunch of new options, but really not.

We'll see as we get closer. I personally think that the % increase talents that Bliz decided is so boring is actually closer to where they should be going. Not like in a 1% overall crit method, but like 15% crit to a certain ability, or reduced cast times or cooldowns on other abilities.

[salate]

Wow didnt expect people to hate it 0.o to be honest. I thought everybody wanted their own builds and creative talent selection like we had in classic (to wotlk ability pruning is cool tho

[Fraydin]

There's no such thing as choice unless youre casual.

If Improved Eclipse does more overall damage than Improved Moonfire/Sunfire, then you will always take Eclipse. There's no choice in the matter.

Or you could *gasp* take both? God forbid people show some creativity where they place their points.

[Yunravel]

ok it could have been cool if they did put all the legion bfa stuff in thoses talents, but as I can see now, did they just took our ACTUAL spells that were using baseline as talents ?

I'm done buying xpac 40e to get the same shit with another shape, fuck that.

[pahbi]

As much as I hate the current talent system, I'd almost rather just keep that so I don't have to deal with Blizz trying to balance all of this.

Even though Blizz is a billion dollar company, I don't trust them to be able to pull something like this off.

[Lex Icon]

this looks rough..
how about keeping the baseline stuff and coming up with some new shit? from the looks of this it will be a complete downgrade of what we have now.

[Lolites]

Is that DK interrupt in the frost section?

no its not, left tree is the same for all specs, its "class tree", interupt is there for all specs
im still pissed it a talent "choice" though

[toon181]

Underwhelming. Was hoping for some new stuff, not just unlocking stuff we already have.

Not a great sign considering these talents are supposed to be one of the main selling points of the expansion.

[Nerovar]

Isn't that what the talent trees were before they were reimagined? What did people expect when they kept shouting they wanted the old talent trees back? You get the old tree mechanics.
There are good reasons why the game moved away from them in the first place.

Nah, you had a pretty much complete character with most of your abilities being unlocked baseline. You then specialized by picking passives and some actives that would alter your gameplay drastically. But most of your utility was already baked into your class.

I guess people who are interested in good class design can always just play WotLK classic after all.

[Lolites]

Underwhelming. Was hoping for some new stuff, not just unlocking stuff we already have.

pretty much this, in frost theres one azerite trait returning, one ability no longer pvp only, and rest are things we already had that we have to pick now...

- - - Updated - - -

do we know how many points we will get? bcs it seems like i would need at least 30 (in spec tree alone) to get abilities and talents i already have now and i doubt we will get so much...
i really hope this is VERY early version and it will be changed drasticaly

[Coffeh]

There's no such thing as choice unless youre casual.

Example from Balance Tree:



If Improved Eclipse does more overall damage than Improved Moonfire/Sunfire, then you will always take Eclipse. There's no choice in the matter.

Row 3:



This is exactly what Balance has now, Force is always taken for dungeons, Nature's Balance is always taken for raids, and Warrior is ignored cause it doesn't compete in damage or utility. No choice.

The min/maxers do that now anyway when the game gives players so little choices. At least in this new system there's a lot more options. You may play perfectly efficiently, but that doesn't mean everyone will or wants to. And casuals outnumber the tryhards anyway.

Or maybe players will pick the best loadouts for certain content but a different loadout for less demanding content. Choices are good, and this system is actually kind of exciting. Which I never thought I'd say about WoW ever again.

[Gorsameth]

this looks rough..
how about keeping the baseline stuff and coming up with some new shit? from the looks of this it will be a complete downgrade of what we have now.

I mean, what did you expect was going to happen? A bunch of stuff that used to be talents went baseline when the talent system was changed. And people shouted to get the old system back because 'it had so much creativity'. Well here is the old system back, so now you need to once again pick stuff that is currently baseline.

[Lex Icon]

I mean, what did you expect was going to happen? A bunch of stuff that used to be talents went baseline when the talent system was changed. And people shouted to get the old system back because 'it had so much creativity'. Well here is the old system back, so now you need to once again pick stuff that is currently baseline.

from what i see saw on this one it's not even comparable.

[jackofwind]

Nah, you had a pretty much complete character with most of your abilities being unlocked baseline

You had a shitty neutered and overall subpar version of a character that only became feasible/viable with talent selection.

It's like you're trying to argue that 0 talent point builds were viable/acceptable or something. The end result of the process is the exact same.

[Vynx]

I was expecting some new stuff, but man, this is hot garbage. On the other side, I'm glad the quality drops in the last years, so I can finally put WoW behind and move on.

[Celvira]

This is incredibly, alarmingly horrifying. Why do we have to choose between a core-defensive and an interrupt in the same row? I was excited for old talents to return, but man does it feel like they are stripping our power away more than the previous system ever did.

Pre-emptive edit to state that, yes, I know we can still get both. But the fact remains that these core abilities, that USED to be baseline for all specs, now require you to spend points to unlock. It doesn't feel good, not does give the new talent revamp a great first impression in the slightest.

Everything that is currently baseline should stay baseline, with the new talents adding new passives/GCD's or enhancing existing abilities/stats in some fashion. Blizzard, I know you can do better that this.