New talent trees lead to more customization

[SNES-1990]

I knew they would just dump our existing baseline spells into the trees and call it a day... Yet I'm still disappointed.

[Kithelle]

Most people are also trash who don't look to optimize their gear/talents or even simcraft for that matter, so their opinion on the topic is irrelevant.

The new talent tree system will either stretch the class design too thin that viable builds will be hard to produce or they will add enough customization for builds to have different niche, and viable, roles. Anyone worth their salt who knows their class in and out will determine that for themselves, and this will barely be a footnote in their gameplay for Dragonflight.

And illusion my ass... There were plenty of viable niche builds with the old system for hybrid classes alone. Many of them basically mandatory for certain encounters but useless for others, which means you needed both builds to exist, and good players experimented and sometimes found better builds that could partially do both and still be viable with others in the same role.

That's total bullshit and we both know it...most of them were either completely worthless or they filled some tiny little minuscule niche that 99.9% of the players don't even care about but someone had some success in easy mode content then trumpet it like it's the greatest build on earth. When people told them it really wasn't good they'd go all Seymour "Am I out of touch? No it's everyone else" Skinner

Only times you could play around weren't till classic, when every single strat was so well known and the raids were completed in just a few hours on opening day, mc was cleared and the entire group wasn't even fully leveled yet. Hybrids were absolute dogshit and unwanted if you weren't healing

You yourself even just said the talents can be awful then you defend them like they're infallible, despite defending them your own post admits they could be totally awful.

Yes it's a illusion of choice, to think otherwise is silly. At best there will likely be a few build per spec, probably a good single target and good aoe, and people will gravitate to them because they're the best. Or have you already forgot about all the complaining about covenants because they absolutely have to take the best covenant for their spec and that they can't choose the one they like over the best in slot.

[Goatfish]

I run slightly off meta mistweaver and rank heroic logs in the top 60 mistweavers in the world. One of the hunters in my guild plays way off meta and currently ranks in the top 600 hunters in heroic logs. Our ret paladin is off meta and ranks in the top 400. If you enjoy what you play and can play it well, go for it. Meta changes based on people trying new shit and that new shit catching on, not just some theoretical simulation on Patchwerk bosses. I assume some fights you might want more defensives, other fights you might want more damage. Heck, if you have enough interrupts for raid already (or don't need them for the boss) it might even be worth not taking an interrupt if it gets you more damage.

The thing I'm really wondering though... Who the fuck has the meta talents memorized for every spec and is going around inspecting everyone to make sure people are playing meta? I haven't run into a single person who cares that much. The closest I've managed to get is being denied for groups for not being a class/spec that's considered good for the meta, but usually even that has more to do with group comp and not even meta elitism. I can't say I've run across anyone in raid pugs or +20's that is digging through peoples talents to micromanage other players. I don't know where these magical people who care that much exist.

[Celement]

I run slightly off meta mistweaver and rank heroic logs in the top 60 mistweavers in the world. One of the hunters in my guild plays way off meta and currently ranks in the top 600 hunters in heroic logs. Our ret paladin is off meta and ranks in the top 400. If you enjoy what you play and can play it well, go for it. Meta changes based on people trying new shit and that new shit catching on, not just some theoretical simulation on Patchwerk bosses. I assume some fights you might want more defensives, other fights you might want more damage. Heck, if you have enough interrupts for raid already (or don't need them for the boss) it might even be worth not taking an interrupt if it gets you more damage.

The thing I'm really wondering though... Who the fuck has the meta talents memorized for every spec and is going around inspecting everyone to make sure people are playing meta? I haven't run into a single person who cares that much. The closest I've managed to get is being denied for groups for not being a class/spec that's considered good for the meta, but usually even that has more to do with group comp and not even meta elitism. I can't say I've run across anyone in raid pugs or +20's that is digging through peoples talents to micromanage other players. I don't know where these magical people who care that much exist.

People bother taking logs in heroic?

What would be the point especially now?
There will be a addon or weak aura that checks I'm sure.

[Goatfish]

People bother taking logs in heroic?

What would be the point especially now?
There will be a addon or weak aura that checks I'm sure.

Not every guild has 20+ people who want to constantly bash their head into mythic raids. In fact, the people who want to do that are in the extreme minority because of the attitude necessary more than the skill necessary. I say this as someone who at one time was an officer in a RWF style guild.

There might be an addon or weak aura that would check, but only the most absolute tools and assholes are going to run it, and those people are a minority of minorities. I'm telling you this as one of those elitist jerks who has actually played this game at the highest level. Even when I was pushing for world firsts we didn't micromanage people, especially not pugs on the very rare occasion we invited them to groups. If they sucked it just made us look better or gave us more to play around. You have no idea how high level players think about the game, and it shows.

If someone is pushing for the 1% elitist meta specs in normal content, that person is an asshole. Anything less than a +16 or cutting edge is just a playground to fiddle with off-meta specs, and if you can make your off-meta spec work in high level content, the people that do that content don't care as long as it works.

[Kalarm]

Yeah I'm pretty sure most will just cookie cutter builds and be done with it. If you tank, you'll end up speccing less into tank and more into DPS as you outgear stuff, etc.

I'm sounding pessimist but I'm actually "cautiously optimist". I think a system like this has potential and we all gotta remember it's the first iteration. And yeah I know, we often had the classic "it will be fixed for launch" which then change to "Fixed for X.1" and finally "for next expansion"... But in this case, it is incredibly early and hard to tell what we will truly have to play with. I'm also concerned of the effect it will have for pure DPS classes VS hybrids. What I mean is, let's take this example, each druid spec is a very different role. Putting points in another tree means... investing in a totally different role that might may be useful or not all that much. IE, what interest does a boomkin have in investing in feral? A feral druid investing in bear means they may be able to offtank a bit in a clutch moment / while a tank gets rezed. Maybe they will spec into resto so they can heal themselves better. In boomkin? Lunar inspiration maybe but I doubt it will make the spec really worth it.

Part of what made hybridization a bit more "viable" in classic / BC was IMO that... the game was really not well balanced. You could do funky stuff that would end up working but were never intended for and sometimes for OP results in some situations. And that's what bothers me... The hybridization will either give birth to things that will get nerfed really fast and/or they will be incredibly niche and rarely make a difference. So for example, you're a feral druid that made heavy hybridization and you can tank and heal. You get into a raid, you are one of the lowest DPS but then oh, tank/healer dies at the last 10% and you pick it up. It could lead to some heroic moments but meanwhile, you're gimping your own role and maybe the tank/heal wouldn't have died if you had the proper DPS. So you're basically depending on your own team to fuck up and 90% of the time, your "hybridization" brought absolutely nothing to the table.

On the other size, it will be interesting to see what happens to pure DPS classes. Will we see some frost mages throwing pyroblasts and top meters? Sublety rogues using swords? The return of gladiator warriors? As an enh sham, I'm really intrigued at what we will get. The premise of enh is a lot of "be elemental but cast your spells in melee". Which means we might see some interesting spec where we cast more spells and optimize how fast we get maelstrom weapon charges. Maybe casting instant lava bursts will become a possibility?! Earthquakes? Who knows... The other way around, I'm not sure an elemental shaman is going to have a lot of incentive to spec into enh. Maybe to stormstrike people who gets them into melee range? We'll see what the tree looks like I'm not sure elemental's will spec into something else than resto... and resto into elemental (specially for PVE).

So yeah, I'm not ready to shoot down the new system but I do have concerns. I genuinely believe a lot of us would of been happy with simply more rows of talents instead of borrowed powers. That's what sucked... Grinding for something you know you will lose. The new trees, as someone say, do have the bad feeling of seeing abilities we currently have become talents.

I don't hate the current talent system at all. I do think it offered more flexibility. I didn't spec "optimally" on my unimportant alts. I often specced for simplicity. I know that on my feral druid I was glad when savage roar was a talent since I don't like keeping track of a buff timer... and getting used to the timing and the constant "looking at the timer" was way too annoying for me. I knew it was the best talent but I stayed far from it. Did occasional normal raids and I was still far from bottom DPS and that was fine for me. I wasn't aiming for more on that character. I do think people exaggerate a ton when they say "If you don't take X you won't be invited to raids" yeah maybe your elitist mythic raid guild or something but most people don't really care. A talent will often do negligible DPS differences that isn't that important in heroic. I started SL as night fae on my main (enh sham) because it was my favourite... design identity? The top DPS was venthyr. Yeah I saw many pulls where the venthyr was out DPSing me a ton on trash but on bosses? Not so much... I've seen that nowadays NF is actually the main choice or something? Not sure what happened to change that hehe.

Anyways, I think the system has potential but I can already see them circle back to the current system when they get tired of balancing all those talents and when everyone complains about being cookie-cutter lol.

[Lothaeryn]

That's total bullshit and we both know it...most of them were either completely worthless or they filled some tiny little minuscule niche that 99.9% of the players don't even care about but someone had some success in easy mode content then trumpet it like it's the greatest build on earth. When people told them it really wasn't good they'd go all Seymour "Am I out of touch? No it's everyone else" Skinner

Only times you could play around weren't till classic, when every single strat was so well known and the raids were completed in just a few hours on opening day, mc was cleared and the entire group wasn't even fully leveled yet. Hybrids were absolute dogshit and unwanted if you weren't healing

You yourself even just said the talents can be awful then you defend them like they're infallible, despite defending them your own post admits they could be totally awful.

Yes it's a illusion of choice, to think otherwise is silly. At best there will likely be a few build per spec, probably a good single target and good aoe, and people will gravitate to them because they're the best. Or have you already forgot about all the complaining about covenants because they absolutely have to take the best covenant for their spec and that they can't choose the one they like over the best in slot.

There are people in this thread alone that have pointed out you are factually wrong, citing their own firsthand experiences with the old talent system that made certain builds much more viable(I.E. met or exceeded the minimum standards needed to play the game and succeed) in a certain boss encounter but not really that good in others. One even cited their experiences as recently as Dragon soul before it was removed. Whether they were optimal is irrelevant, they were viable, and thats the key word you have chosen to ignore each time this topic has been brought up. Vanilla is the only case where you were right, because Afrasiabi and Kaplan hated hybrids so much from their Everquest days they forced the Hybrid class talent design to emphasize healing and Warrior's to emphasize tanking. The only real dps options being Rogue, Mage, and Hunter(AKA, pure dps classes, which is a no brainer), with Warlock having mixed success depending on *GASP* their own preferred talent choices?!? (Go figure that)

Thats not even getting into the fact that Certain builds that literally wouldnt work could be viable with given Tier bonuses that otherwise added to additional avenues to talent building. Were they optimal? Probably not, but as long as they were viable? Who the fuck should care about that 1% dps increase unless youre a World First player? The boss is either dead, or you guys wiped because your team failed the mechanics; that 1% means fuckall in the calculation metric of success.

The fact Blizzard is actually trying to change things up and test old waters is quite a refreshing shock; since it seems they are trying to learn something from their past designs and mistakes. They have a chance to make this work and have different class builds be viable for different game modes, but whether they can pull it off remains to be seen. If they listen to early feedback they could make the Talent system work with many viable builds for M+, raiding, and PvP. If they don't, then the worst it will be is cookie cutter like before (as if MoP's talent system was any different, it was not) and good players will still find one or two viable builds that aren't meta. Whether theyre 100% optimal is naught but irrelevant to anyone but people like you who cant fathom dropping 1% performance for a smoother build and more importantly fun rotation.

But its been quite clear youve been an ass-kisser of modern Blizzard's game design across this forum up until recently. Discussing anything with you is as redundant as talking to my dead cat about gameplay design, so agree to disagree and move on.

[Dracullus]

People who like to experiment will have toys to play around. Same with people who make guides. People who follow guides will download specific build just like now. Leveling will be more interesting, especially for new people. Everyone will benefit from simplicity of new system (no longer did I pick right lego? did I pick right covenant? right soulbind? OK ready to go... fuck wrong conduits, must go back guys).

What exactly is problem here again? I see problems in next expansion that no longer will introduce fresh progression system, but not now.

[melzas]

I run slightly off meta mistweaver and rank heroic logs in the top 60 mistweavers in the world. One of the hunters in my guild plays way off meta and currently ranks in the top 600 hunters in heroic logs. Our ret paladin is off meta and ranks in the top 400. If you enjoy what you play and can play it well, go for it. Meta changes based on people trying new shit and that new shit catching on, not just some theoretical simulation on Patchwerk bosses. I assume some fights you might want more defensives, other fights you might want more damage. Heck, if you have enough interrupts for raid already (or don't need them for the boss) it might even be worth not taking an interrupt if it gets you more damage.

The thing I'm really wondering though... Who the fuck has the meta talents memorized for every spec and is going around inspecting everyone to make sure people are playing meta? I haven't run into a single person who cares that much. The closest I've managed to get is being denied for groups for not being a class/spec that's considered good for the meta, but usually even that has more to do with group comp and not even meta elitism. I can't say I've run across anyone in raid pugs or +20's that is digging through peoples talents to micromanage other players. I don't know where these magical people who care that much exist.

While I agree that players create the meta, I see people who would inspect you and then kick/deny when they see your talent/covenant choices very often (though I mostly do PvP these days so maybe that's why).

Especially before you could freely swap coveants, having some off-meta covenant was often an instant kick. Until people can see that your spec/choice actually works, they won't be willing to play with you in most cases.

At the start of SL season 1 when everything was new and fresh, I was playing arena with my off-meta holy priest with auto res legendary (back then disc carried over from BFA as meta spec and holy was considered a meme spec for arena, and auto res was considered a gimmick). Guess what's meta now? And no, holy didn't get any buffs either, it's just meta shifted be players were trying new things.

Anyway, I think it's pointless to theorycraft if new talent trees will give us enough variation to make off meta choices that actually work in some content, so I'm saving my judgment until at least half of S1 in dragonflight.

[klaps_05]

There has never been an illusion, but new talents face a new problem. The cookie cutter builds make you drop utility, as utility generally doesnt bring dps to yourself and all talents have a dmg weight.

For example as a DK, your "max dmg bonuses from class tree" build doesnt have abo limb and AMZ/AMZ talents. Which means you are practically griefing your raid if you want to do top dmg. Similar case for druids - why waste a point in interrupt if you are guardian/feral when you can get tons of other direct benefits?

This brings up even another topic - how will raids and dungeons be designed if utility is optional? blizzard is known for catering a lot to ppl who dont want to optimize, which is ok, but that means dungeon/raids design can significantly suffer.

[Mehrunes]

There are people in this thread alone that have pointed out you are factually wrong, citing their own firsthand experiences with the old talent system that made certain builds much more viable(I.E. met or exceeded the minimum standards needed to play the game and succeed) in a certain boss encounter but not really that good in others. One even cited their experiences as recently as Dragon soul before it was removed. Whether they were optimal is irrelevant, they were viable, and thats the key word you have chosen to ignore each time this topic has been brought up. Vanilla is the only case where you were right, because Afrasiabi and Kaplan hated hybrids so much from their Everquest days they forced the Hybrid class talent design to emphasize healing and Warrior's to emphasize tanking. The only real dps options being Rogue, Mage, and Hunter(AKA, pure dps classes, which is a no brainer), with Warlock having mixed success depending on *GASP* their own preferred talent choices?!? (Go figure that)

Thats not even getting into the fact that Certain builds that literally wouldnt work could be viable with given Tier bonuses that otherwise added to additional avenues to talent building. Were they optimal? Probably not, but as long as they were viable? Who the fuck should care about that 1% dps increase unless youre a World First player? The boss is either dead, or you guys wiped because your team failed the mechanics; that 1% means fuckall in the calculation metric of success.

The fact Blizzard is actually trying to change things up and test old waters is quite a refreshing shock; since it seems they are trying to learn something from their past designs and mistakes. They have a chance to make this work and have different class builds be viable for different game modes, but whether they can pull it off remains to be seen. If they listen to early feedback they could make the Talent system work with many viable builds for M+, raiding, and PvP. If they don't, then the worst it will be is cookie cutter like before (as if MoP's talent system was any different, it was not) and good players will still find one or two viable builds that aren't meta. Whether theyre 100% optimal is naught but irrelevant to anyone but people like you who cant fathom dropping 1% performance for a smoother build and more importantly fun rotation.

But its been quite clear youve been an ass-kisser of modern Blizzard's game design across this forum up until recently. Discussing anything with you is as redundant as talking to my dead cat about gameplay design, so agree to disagree and move on.

Your "As if MoP talent system was any different" remark works both ways. MoP redesign didn't kill off the possibility of multiple viable builds for a given spec. What it killed off was meaningless fluff. Because in pre-MoP trees it weren't the boring-ass +1/2/3/4/5% crit talents that acted as the cornerstones of various viable builds. It were the active 1 point talents or the big 1 (occasionally 2) point passives. In MoP devs just realized that and focused on those types of talents.

And, depending on your spec, you only got more viable builds after that. Affliction Warlock for example only had 1 meaningful path in pre-MoP times in PvE, because SL-SL was just a PvP build and after maxing your Aff tree you didn't have enough points left to pick anything from either Demo or Destro that would have changed your rotation in any way. And the moment it happened in Cata and Aff/Demo opened the possibility of a drain filler, Blizzard killed it.

So nothing's going to change in Dragonflight in regards to the possibility of a spec having more than one viable build just because the game is returning to a variation of pre-MoP builds. The only thing that changes is that the trees will once again be at a risk of having to be padded with meaningless BS.

[Lothaeryn]

So nothing's going to change in Dragonflight in regards to the possibility of a spec having more than one viable build just because the game is returning to a variation of pre-MoP builds. The only thing that changes is that the trees will once again be at a risk of having to be padded with meaningless BS.

The key difference being that those passive % talents that you call fluff actually did make certain builds work since those stats werent always available through gear. Rogues had quite a few builds based off that principle in the old design; and yes, there were dead specs for certain content, but thats basically saying the sky is blue at this point, and MoP's system had boatloads of that problem to begin with.

You also have to remember that before Cata, talent trees didnt lock you out of your other spec abilities. If this system works as I hope it will, lockouts won't be the case, allowing for more hybridization builds that will likely have good niche roles in stuff like M15's with the right gear.

If they actually learn anything this time around, there will be more options presented as a complimentary utility to the spec and not a detriment to the overall builds. The first red flag to me is having Interrupt and certain CD's tied to this system, making them optional is problematic; something they hopefully will listen to with feedback before beta testing.

[Super Kami Dende]

No they don't. Blizzard has just fooled the usual idiots into thinking these trees give any increase over what we already have, and they will lap it up and think WoW has changed for the better.

[sam86]

anyone who played wrath remember the nightmare of balance, and the insane weird builts that came all time, from MM hunter with prep, sub/combat rogue infinity combo build, and so on
Probably only thing i'm actually positive about next exp and loving it, can't wait for test some weird builts that on paper shouldn't work only to produce a broken pvp or raid build (infinity combo points rogue was broken in raid setting only for example)
So wait, who knows how will it scale, protadin scaled so well with pvp gear that paladin was healing with it in arenas until blizz nerfed it (to the ground, baby!) and for the 1502 time pull their hair from how creative playerbase is with actual free customizable talents

[Nymrohd]

Not every guild has 20+ people who want to constantly bash their head into mythic raids. In fact, the people who want to do that are in the extreme minority because of the attitude necessary more than the skill necessary. I say this as someone who at one time was an officer in a RWF style guild.

There might be an addon or weak aura that would check, but only the most absolute tools and assholes are going to run it, and those people are a minority of minorities. I'm telling you this as one of those elitist jerks who has actually played this game at the highest level. Even when I was pushing for world firsts we didn't micromanage people, especially not pugs on the very rare occasion we invited them to groups. If they sucked it just made us look better or gave us more to play around. You have no idea how high level players think about the game, and it shows.

If someone is pushing for the 1% elitist meta specs in normal content, that person is an asshole. Anything less than a +16 or cutting edge is just a playground to fiddle with off-meta specs, and if you can make your off-meta spec work in high level content, the people that do that content don't care as long as it works.

While I wouldn't run it ahead of time, if we had trouble progressing and there were weak links, I would check their logs (as the raid leader it is pretty much my job) and if their build was really out there, I would be making suggestions. And yes, if they refused to take feedback and showed no improvement they'd be benched.

[Revamp Man]

oh trust me,if you try to be cute and not pick raid cds or interupts or dispels,you know....stuff you get for free now,you will 100% not be invited to shit

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this is proly the most delusional thing i have seen on this website

''the 1%'' have like 1% of the content in the game,everything else is casualy friendly,m0 is piss easy,so is m+ until the much later levels,normal is easy,worlds quests are easy

99% of the content in this game that offers gear is piss easy,heck even mythic raids have plenty of piss easy bosses if your half decent

If I don't get invited to a raid because I skipped my interrupt on a boss like sludgefist or shriekwing then I'm OK with that because the group is going to fall apart at the first wipe

Where's amz in the dk tree? Oh yeah in the middle almost completely unavoidable

Where's the raid cd in the druid tree? In the middle and in order to be avoided you need to put in extra effort

The customization is mostly based on spec trees and I can almost guarantee that the meta everyone is arguing about right now is going to change once we actually get numbers

We already have people saying that you have to build X way in order for the spec to work because the only way for it to work is for it to be the same as it is now.

[Celement]

Not every guild has 20+ people who want to constantly bash their head into mythic raids. In fact, the people who want to do that are in the extreme minority because of the attitude necessary more than the skill necessary. I say this as someone who at one time was an officer in a RWF style guild.

There might be an addon or weak aura that would check, but only the most absolute tools and assholes are going to run it, and those people are a minority of minorities. I'm telling you this as one of those elitist jerks who has actually played this game at the highest level. Even when I was pushing for world firsts we didn't micromanage people, especially not pugs on the very rare occasion we invited them to groups. If they sucked it just made us look better or gave us more to play around. You have no idea how high level players think about the game, and it shows.

If someone is pushing for the 1% elitist meta specs in normal content, that person is an asshole. Anything less than a +16 or cutting edge is just a playground to fiddle with off-meta specs, and if you can make your off-meta spec work in high level content, the people that do that content don't care as long as it works.

They will just use it alongside raider io.

I'm sure they will look the other way for overly geared players but I don't expect a games community that has behaved the same way for almost 20 years to suddenly change.

There also isn't a need to micromanage people at the world first level you just filter out non performers.

[Revamp Man]

People who like to experiment will have toys to play around. Same with people who make guides. People who follow guides will download specific build just like now. Leveling will be more interesting, especially for new people. Everyone will benefit from simplicity of new system (no longer did I pick right lego? did I pick right covenant? right soulbind? OK ready to go... fuck wrong conduits, must go back guys).

What exactly is problem here again? I see problems in next expansion that no longer will introduce fresh progression system, but not now.

Leveling as a tank and healer will actually be much easier and being able to save loadouts will be great

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There has never been an illusion, but new talents face a new problem. The cookie cutter builds make you drop utility, as utility generally doesnt bring dps to yourself and all talents have a dmg weight.

For example as a DK, your "max dmg bonuses from class tree" build doesnt have abo limb and AMZ/AMZ talents. Which means you are practically griefing your raid if you want to do top dmg. Similar case for druids - why waste a point in interrupt if you are guardian/feral when you can get tons of other direct benefits?

This brings up even another topic - how will raids and dungeons be designed if utility is optional? blizzard is known for catering a lot to ppl who dont want to optimize, which is ok, but that means dungeon/raids design can significantly suffer.

Amz is almost required just to move down the tree

[Lolites]

How do we know there aren't just going to be cookie cutter builds like with the old talent trees? there is always a best build with these kind of trees isn't there?

ofc there will be and i wouldnt mind that, but right now as frost DK in those talent calculators for lvl 70 i cant even make build i play right now in live... on lvl 60... bcs i have to pick abilities i have now as baseline...
that is outright stupid, especialy since i can pick obliteration/icecap without picking pillar of frost...

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Fanbase: Stop catering to the top 1%!
Blizzard: Here is some variety to play what you want.
Fanvase: Why bother? I'll only play what the top 1% does!

i would LOVE to make my own build, the one i have now is great even though its not "Best", too bad i cant have it in DF bcs i have to use talents to pick baseline abilities and shite i dont want to simply bcs its the only path to abilities i want...
"old" talent trees were far better in that regard, just enough points to progress further no pointless "paths" that do literaly nothing just streamline people into few playable options...

[klaps_05]

Amz is almost required just to move down the tree

Mid-way on the dk class tree is only survivability talents while both left/right sides offer DPS.