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

[mrmsix6]

It's like they asked a team of accountants to analyze current class design and re-organize it into tree form...where is the inspiration?

WAY more of these abilities need to be baseline. Talents should then improve and/or modify the behavior of the abilities, with a number of passive nodes and handful of unique abilities accessed through important nodes in the tree. Come up with a bunch of new, crazy abilities that we DON'T already have. ITERATE on class design.

Is anyone really excited for another 2 years of Unholy festering wound gameplay? How about balance druids and eclipse?

Thankfully it is early. Let's hope feedback is actually taken into account this time around.

[Dristereau]

Will have to play around with it when Alpha/Beta comes out, but not exactly impressed. Having to talent into an interrupt is pretty crazy to me, along with Death Strike and Chains of Ice being talents. A lot of it feels like it's choosing 3/4 of what your currently have.

There is some older stuff in there as well, I see Azerite traits; Frostwhelps and Festermight. However you also have to take a talent as Unholy DK to make your pet permanent, which is kind of strange if damage stays as it is in SL because your pet is most of your damage.

I don't really like it, but I never expected to. I like the current system but let's be realistic here; whatever content I'll be doing, I'll look up Wowhead/Acherus/Icy Veins for the best builds, see what PVPers are using for their trees and do that.

[The-Shan]

Hey, you might only have 1/3 of the abilities you had as baseline back in MoP but at least you can choose which 1/3 you want to have. It's called meaningful choice.

personally I'm against classes having too much utility because it strips them of identity when everyone can do everything.

[Storque]

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.

The main reason I’m disappointed is because I remember, back in the day, new expansions were exciting for every class/spec because the new capstone talents brought something new to the class.

I think this system is overall better (and less prone to getting fucked up) than our current system, because talent trees, pvp talents, covenants, legendaries and soulbinds all interact with each other and lead to weird, multiplicative ability scaling.

Whereas this system just has two character progression systems, which only interact with one another. And it still functionally preserves the core tools that we’ve gotten from these borrowed power systems anyways.

I’m mainly complaining about the fact that while it preserves everything that’s old, it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table.

[Fentawow]

I dont think that is even reasonable to suggest. A few more things being baseline than the current tree - sure but more than that would be completely impractical.

With your way they would need to design a 80+ point talent tree (between both the class and spec trees) with completely new talents for the most part. That makes no sense. They are allowing you choice as you level to stretch to get abilities prior to when you normally would be able to and fill out your own skill set to a certain degree.

- - - Updated - - -

I think this is a very reasonable take that the end traits could bring a little more freshness and have encompassed something a little better.

[Nerovar]

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.

I'm not sure how the math here works in your mind. Having 71 talent points on top of a somewhat functional baseline core of abilities is more than having a pruned shell of a class with 61 talent points that give you some of your most basic utility back. I don't see how the two approaches are even remotely similar.

[Goatfish]

personally I'm against classes having too much utility because it strips them of identity when everyone can do everything.

I can sort of agree with this, but it causes issues when balancing content. Personally I feel that healers should have access to dispel all dispellable debuffs though. Especially in Shadowlands, there are a lot of really nasty debuffs in certain dungeons that aren't dispellable by certain classes because lore. Not being able to dispel curses in DoS, HoA, ToP, or Sanguine is pretty painful as a monk. Some of these we're talking about having to pump out an extra 10k hps to keep someone alive or blowing a life cocoon just to save them from getting basically 1-shot in higher keys. We could probably use a few more soothe abilities spread around for things like the raging mob at the start of ToP that does 50k+ dps to a group if not soothed when doing around a +20.

I mean other options include just making more dangerous abilities interruptible or magic effects, or I guess just not caring if people lack the toolkit to almost ever get invited to certain dungeons at higher levels.

[jackofwind]

I'm not sure how the math here works in your mind. Having 71 talent points on top of a somewhat functional baseline core of abilities is more than having a pruned shell of a class with 61 talent points that give you some of your most basic utility back. I don't see how the two approaches are even remotely similar.

But you don't have 71 talent points on top of a functional baseline. You have 7 talent points that don't offer the kind of interesting choices the reduced point system was designed to do in MoP.

[Ielenia]

I really don't like how the base DK talents are distributed. If I'm frost, I have to spent 7 whole points just to get Death's Advance, or 6 if I want Wraith Walk.

And then there's the whole thing about our interrupt ability now being a talent, where non-frost specs have to spend two points to get it...

[Toby451]

I’m mainly complaining about the fact that while it preserves everything that’s old, it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table.

Yes it does. There are multiple skills/passive skills in DK alone that you cannot do currently on retail. IE: Soul Reaper on Frost/Blood DK. There are many other examples, im not going to list them all.



Plus they already said these trees are being designed to be expanded upon into the future.

[Woggmer]

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.

Y'know, this isn't the final cut, even the images of the talents all say "Mock-Up" for all we know they're just there for a placeholder until they can make actual new spells. They even said that some talents would have legendary passives from Shadowlands to be added in.

The outrage is real, but we're still very VERY early in this. We don't even have an Alpha yet. The only thing we've seen that's actually "new" is the Mark of the Wild raid buff that Druids got in their new talent trees.

[threads]

so far im disappointed tbh. i was hoping for presences, army classwide, unholy wound popping removed, etc. seems more like we are just going to have mostly the same specs but rearranged into a bigger tree for lvlers.

[hulkgor]

ffs Blizzard, update those icons already, they are 20 years old.

Why exactly would they change iconic, well known, established icons? To cause an outrage from the playerbase?

[Ragu4]

People here talking about ability pruning and complaining, while I'm all for it. I'm sorry, I'm 30 with a career, I'm done with complex game play. Give me WOTLK paladins where the DPS and tank were face roll and holy was breaking your flash of light key with occasional holy shock and insta cast holy lights.

[Slybak]

I really don't like how the base DK talents are distributed. If I'm frost, I have to spent 7 whole points just to get Death's Advance, or 6 if I want Wraith Walk.

And then there's the whole thing about our interrupt ability now being a talent, where non-frost specs have to spend two points to get it...

It's pretty hard not to take Mind Freeze as Unholy because there are a bunch of DPS talents on the left side of the tree that require Mind Freeze (and IBF) to unlock. The bigger challenge for Unholy and Frost is how much wiggle room you have for stuff like AMS while squeezing in all the +DPS talents.

Potentially the most jarring change is that every damage-increasing talent on the right side of this tree requires taking Raise Dead, meaning that if you want to take all of them as Frost you'll be using a pet.

[Monkiy]

This talent system looks atrocious. Scrap it. Forget the idea ever even existed. Having to talent into every defensive, every movement boost, our freaking interrupt, or even just the class healing ability is just pants on head stupid.

The majority of these trees are necessary to class and role function. Really, I can't wait to get that one tank who doesn't interrupt a key mechanic because, "lol, I didn't take that talent, I got the extra 2% Crit instead." What happens when all these people with their theoretically unique talents all get into a dungeon, and zero of them have an interrupt? This current design is just asking for so much trouble.

[Noobslayer]

This looks so overly difficult to balance. Especially when things are added in the future. I can only imagine the brokenness in future patches when additional class "tuning" is done. Just not getting good vibes on this.

[Nerovar]

so far im disappointed tbh. i was hoping for presences, army classwide, unholy wound popping removed, etc. seems more like we are just going to have mostly the same specs but rearranged into a bigger tree for lvlers.

Yeah, this. They really don't want to move away from the Legion reworks. Classes will be more or less the same for 4 expansions (8 years) in a row.

[Shadowroxxor]

For the love of god don't make Breath of Sindragosa baseline!

[Ielenia]

It's pretty hard not to take Mind Freeze as Unholy because there are a bunch of DPS talents on the left side of the tree that require Mind Freeze (and IBF) to unlock. The bigger challenge for Unholy and Frost is how much wiggle room you have for stuff like AMS while squeezing in all the +DPS talents.

Potentially the most jarring change is that every damage-increasing talent on the right side of this tree requires taking Raise Dead, meaning that if you want to take all of them as Frost you'll be using a pet.

I think what pisses me off the most is how Blizzard keeps just taking everything that is baseline (such as interrupt and the most basic defensive cooldowns) and tossing them into that talent tree on the excuse of "ChOiCeS mAtTeR!!" instead of actually giving us new choices to make.