Do you think talent trees will be cookie cutter?

[Lighthope]

Been looking over the talent trees for Dragonflight. They sure look like they are going to be cookie-cutter/Spec-This-Way-Or-Denied-To-Group like it was back when they had talent trees before.

What do you think from what you've seen (and what you know about the playerbase)?

Are the new talent trees going to usher in a new era of flexibility? Or is it going to be a one-spec disaster in the making?

[Ealyssa]

If you give choice one will be the best, period. Perfect balance is impossible if the choice aren’t the exact same spells.

No matter how flexible a system is, majority will tend toward the best option.

[Niwes]

counter-question: what was ever non-cookie-cutter?

[RobertMugabe]

Just like with the original talent trees, there will be at the very least a small number of free choice. With how the trees are looking are looking like though, they might offer a little more choice compared to the original ones though, but overall yeah you will have BiS talent trees.

However there probably won't be a single spec which will be the best for all pve content, I am sure there will be different builds for m+, raiding and then some are better suited for aoe heavy fights, some are better for st fights etc etc. I wouldn't be surprised if there will be 2-3 possible BiS builds per spec for PVE content, which IMO is pretty good. The real question is actually: How much will these builds differ in actual gameplay.

[DechCJC]

There’ll likely be pretty mainstream builds, but for PvP in particular I see a tonne of flexibility with builds depending on what you’re against.

[Triceron]

counter-question: what was ever non-cookie-cutter?

Professions.

[enigma77]

Ofc. The way they are set up you will have one bis build for single target, one for aoe and one for a bit of both. Maybe some build for some niche cases.

Then you have a few choices, what kind of utility you want or don't want.

[Selah]

Undoubtedly there will be a meta. And, given how the system works, there'll likely be BiS builds for certain scenarios. ST raid, AoE raid, M+ ST, M+AoE, and so on. But, I want to make a point in saying that just because there is a meta/BiS/Cookie Cutter (whatever the phase of the day may be), it doesn't mean that the trees are failures or aren't worth having in the game. Nor does that mean that if you don't have the meta build of the week that you won't be viable in whatever content you're engaging with.

[Lochton]

Been looking over the talent trees for Dragonflight. They sure look like they are going to be cookie-cutter/Spec-This-Way-Or-Denied-To-Group like it was back when they had talent trees before.

What do you think from what you've seen (and what you know about the playerbase)?

Are the new talent trees going to usher in a new era of flexibility? Or is it going to be a one-spec disaster in the making?

I know there will be, but luckily there are a lot more options that it will take some time for them to have the cookie-cutter ready. There were cookie-cutters for the oldest ones, the newest, and there will be for these as well, and many will use them because they are either going for numbers or can't be bothered exploring the opportunities.

[melzas]

counter-question: what was ever non-cookie-cutter?

PvP talents I'd say. a lot of specs have plenty of good options and you don't just go with whatever is the best, I mean, you probably do most of the time, but there are so many variables that it's often not so obvious.

[God Save The King]

There will be a theoretical best for each situation for each spec. No matter what they do, unless the trees are purely utility, there will be a best answer. Similar to today's trees, they can make specific builds better in aoe, 2 target, 3 target, and single target. That's the real 'choice', at least in PvE. You swap your talents to the best for the situation you'll be facing.

The interesting nuance comes from suboptimal talents. E.g., old Bloodtalons for feral. It was a difficult rotation on a target dummy, let alone on a hectic mythic fight. It was theoretically best, but you could choose the second best talent in that row, moment of clarity, and drop your rotational complexity quite a lot. My feral was just an alt, so I was happy enough to play a slightly worse build. My dps actually went up quite a bit because I could perform the baseline rotation easily compared to the 'best' one. Other specs have had similar situations that are interesting. Choose a solid passive and lose 1-2% dps, or choose the active ability and risk tanking your damage due to skill.

[Triceron]

Not true either. In Wrath at least you min/maxed your prof bonuses for raiding or whatever.

Yeah but at some point, professions became non-cookie cutter. Same as race choice and racials, for the most part.

While cookie cutter builds tend to be associated with min-maxers because that's usually who define the optimal builds, if the build itself isn't widely being followed then it isn't really cookie cutter. So like with Covenants, we know there is a cookie cutter choice because people were picking their covenants for performance. Choice of race is much more trivial and there's no real Class build that would include optimal Race choice that a good chunk of players are following. Like, most people are playing Blood Elves on the Horde, but not for reasons of power gains or performance.


Cookie cutter builds become more apparant if there is a significant gap in power between choices. If there is a trivial power difference, then the build isn't really gonna be considered cookie cutter one way or another. So really, it depends on how finely tuned balance these new talents and the talent tree becomes. If they somehow balance it in a way where every choice gives the same performance advantage, then the choice between them is more a matter of preference than performance.

[Myradin]

Yeah but at some point, professions became non-cookie cutter. Same as race choice and racials, for the most part.

While cookie cutter builds tend to be associated with min-maxers because that's usually who define the optimal builds, if the build itself isn't widely being followed then it isn't really cookie cutter. So like with Covenants, we know there is a cookie cutter choice because there's obvious gains and losses, but choice of race is much more trivial and there's no real Class build that would include optimal Race choice that a good chunk of players are following.

Cookie cutter builds become more apparant if there is a significant gap in power between choices. If there is a trivial power difference, then the build isn't really gonna be considered cookie cutter one way or another. Like, most people are playing Blood Elves on the Horde, but not for reasons of power gains or performance.

This was achieved largely by making them irrelevant though.Profs in that they lost alot of their flat bonuses, and races because they provide usually a handful of buffs at bet.

Talent trees would have to be reduced largely to the cosmetic or even weaker than the Mop-SL trees to become not cookie-cutter. Even utility will be optimized based on what encounters the player is planning to encounter.

[Niwes]

PvP talents I'd say. a lot of specs have plenty of good options and you don't just go with whatever is the best, I mean, you probably do most of the time, but there are so many variables that it's often not so obvious.

Partially agree.

In PvP the "usefulness" of one talent often outweighs another talent. So there are again cookie cutter builds.

But as you said, there is not such a strict "line" like in PvE. And the nature of PvP offers more useful niches for different talents.

In short: At the end of the day above says the same thing you said. So i agree.

[Revamp Man]

Probably but that's because of the community and the fact that they would need to have every build equal to avoid it which is impossible

[Flame6]

Of course there will be. It's pretty darn hard to go down these new trees and select things that are wildly different than other people doing the same content even if you dont stick to a guide or a sim.

I would rather see the current talent options just reworked/expanded on then giant tree that just appears to give lots of options but really only offers a handful of choices.

[NineSpine]

The same thing will happen that always happens:

Real cutting edge players will play the meta because they have to.
Casual players will play what they think is fun.
Average meta slaves will play the meta because they tell themselves that they have to even though it doesn't really matter for them, and then they will take their frustration with that out on everyone else.

[Garymorilix]

PvP talents I'd say. a lot of specs have plenty of good options and you don't just go with whatever is the best, I mean, you probably do most of the time, but there are so many variables that it's often not so obvious.

Unfair comparison.

PvP, especially arena, has way too much variance between what you can face and also there are talents that are literally useless vs certain comps.
For example you are not taking disarm against casters.

In PvE the variance is non-existent.
The biggest thing you got is Fortified vs Tyrannical weeks, and even then, you don't build your character for 1 boss fight in a 30+ min run.
That's why even on Tyrannical it makes more sense to bring your general M+ aoe build on 90% of classes.

There will be minimal wiggle room in the new talents.
It's utterly stupid from this point of view and I bet even Blizzard knows this.

They are selling it as a "we are going back to the good ol' days" which was the exact same thing: you had like 1-2 meta presets and that's it, you never changed those.
This is more of a PR move than an actual gameplay focused one.
I'll give it 2 weeks after DF S1 start and everyone will be using the same shit. As always.

[NineSpine]

Of course there will be. It's pretty darn hard to go down these new trees and select things that are wildly different than other people doing the same content even if you dont stick to a guide or a sim.

I would rather see the current talent options just reworked/expanded on then giant tree that just appears to give lots of options but really only offers a handful of choices.

The current system is not realistically expandable. That's the point of the rework.

- - - Updated - - -

Its impossible to not to have cookie cutter talent trees in games that are as datamined as wow. Ofc there will be optimal trees and most players will be forced to use them just to be accepted to some party.

Only about 50% of players ever set foot in a single M+, and far fewer than that ever normal+ raid. The truth is that meta slavery impacts far less than half of players.

[Kyux]

People will argue there are optimum builds for damage output, or damage reduction, or healing output, but even then they will be situation-specific. There will also be optimum builds for mobility, or for raid support, or for self-sustaining as a dps. As a druid there'll be an optimum build for being a balance-bear, or a cat-bear, or a healing-bear.

So yeah, there will be "cookie cutter" builds, but there's still an infinite variety of situations each requiring a different build. So much so it all comes back to picking the talents you need for what you want to do, throwing the "one-size-fits-all" build out the window.