DK talents WTF!?

[Goat7]

This is how things were...and these how things were going to be, but some people really had to have "classic" talent trees back

Exactly.

ppl mad slow thinking oh these "new" talent trees are gonna be so cool and it will make things so interesting again. Umm no.. its not new, it was not interesting before, it wont be again, still going to be cookie cutter at the end of the day and it really is just an ILLUSION to make things appear "new" and "fresh".

spending points to get what u already had. now spending points on talents that were legendary items that you had in legion. honestly what a joke this is, no creativity or anytime spent on anything new. this whole damn DF xpac is just one big giant re skin, cept for dragonflying, they stole that idea from another game.

end rant

[Ielenia]

Except it wasn't baseline, you brought it from the class trainer, or picked it from the original talents.

Mind Freeze (our interrupt), Death Strike (our self-heal) and Icebound Fortitude (our defensive CD) were baseline. And yes, they were baseline, and 'buying from trainer' is irrelevant because those don't force you into a choice. You didn't have to choose between "buying Death Strike or Mind Freeze". You could buy both, and buying anything from the trainer didn't lock you out from buying other abilities.

So the very incarnation of certain abilities (like lichborne) were that you spent talents on them. This is them returning to form.

Then return those to talent form and keep the baseline ones.

You sound like someone who didn't play when the original talent system was around, which is fine.

Except I have. You're just making wild assumptions about me.

I promise you, it's fine...and exactly the same thing.

And you're wrong. Plain and simple.

The talent trees are structured in a way that you can access the baseline things you need (unless you don't want it).

You're wrong. If you're a tank and don't care about Chains of Ice or having an interrupt? Well, TOUGH LUCK! Buy that shit anyways because those are mandatory requirements if you want to get the Icebound Fortitude cooldown.

You could spend more time out in the world, but you no longer went back to cities to go level up and learn new abilities.

Which is a good thing. Few things annoyed me more than having to stop leveling in Feralas and have to fly back all the way to Darnassus to learn new abilities, and then fly all the way back down to continue leveling.

We still won't have to go back to cities, just now when you level, instead of auto getting an ability, you auto get a talent point to choose when you get the ability you want.

And you missed the entire point. I'm not against the new talent trees. I'm against taking baseline stuff and tossing them into the talent trees to bloat them bigger. Blizzard should instead make new stuff instead of ripping our classes to barebones without talents.

- - - Updated - - -

You know what you would have access to if they didn't re-do the talent trees?

Either a completely new ability, or an upgrade for an existing ability. One or the other. And if that results in trimmer talent trees, all the better. I'm tired of Blizzard ripping baseline stuff from the classes and tossing them into talent trees.

What you get with the new talent tree is the ability to keep some of the shit you would otherwise completely lose access to, at the cost of a design MEANT FOR LEVELLING where you put a couple points in to get things you have under the current system (a system that does not allow those abilities to be optional).

Your argument fails because you're presenting a false dichotomy. And here's a third option: how about we keep stuff that is baseline as baseline and make this new talent trees with new stuff?

I don't know why people like you think less choice is better, but this blatant dishonesty about what's going on is getting fucking old.

Illusion of choice is no choice at all. There is no dishonesty in my arguments.

[Skildar]

I'm quite interested in seeing how we will use these talent trees. Will we indeed go full mobility and damage and ignore the rest? Will this only be the case in raiding? Will people use multiple archetypes? Will one be used for outdoor content?

I very much enjoy how the death knight talent tree currently looks, there some improvements to be made, especially on unholy, but the class one is very nice.

I know it feels weird to have to "purchase" things you used to have to some but it's just a big change of design. In the end you will be able to play as you wish. Let's see if balancing is done properly so that the delta between different talent picks in the class tree isn't too big.

Overly optimistic about all of this, definitely a good experiment.

[wushootaki]

Every DK used to have chains of ice before they isolated specs. And to get to icebound fortitude, which I assume is what you want for tanking, you get 3 abilities that help you tank.

Not wanting an interupt on a tank? What? Every tank has one, and its a way to ensure less dmg is incoming. Mind Freeze is fine --- so is the auto attacks to give you a shield, and then boom you have Icebound fortitude. Nothing feels wasted here.

[Goatfish]

Your argument fails because you're presenting a false dichotomy. And here's a third option: how about we keep stuff that is baseline as baseline and make this new talent trees with new stuff?

Illusion of choice is no choice at all. There is no dishonesty in my arguments.

Then according to you there is no such thing as choice because there is always a limited number of options to pick from and there will always be a mathematically best meta.

I assure you I didn't present a false dichotomy because I never claimed only 2 choices. The problem with just constantly adding new shit is balance issues and action bar bloat, we've already gone through this experiment in WoW before. I'm not going to continue this discussion since it seems you just want to keep up this passive aggressive hate fest for whatever reason. Several people have already explained clearly why your argument on this is just misguided, but you don't seem to give a shit about the facts and just want to complain that blizzard is taking away abilities that they aren't at all taking away.

[Ielenia]

Then according to you there is no such thing as choice because there is always a limited number of options to pick from and there will always be a mathematically best meta.

Wrong. Being forced to pick a talent that is useless to you personally because you need an ability further down that particular line removes choice. You're not choosing to buy those useless talents, you're being forced to because you require something further down that path.

For example: "I'm a tank. I don't need or care about Chains of Ice. I don't need or care for Mind Freeze. Plenty of interrupters and slowers in the raid already. But, man, I am being forced to get those talents because Icebound Fortitude, i.e. my tank cooldown, is further down that line." Where is the choice? I don't have the choice of not getting Chains of Ice. Or Mind Freeze.

Amazingly enough, IMO, this talent tree manages to be worse of all three iterations so far for the talent trees.

[AlmightyGerkin]

There is a reason that old talent trees were removed. They didn't feel good.

Compared to what people have now... wotlk talent trees were great. Sure they had some no one ever picked but these trees opened up the options to have hybrid classes. Example you could be frost tank dk or blood dps with some unholy added into it. It opened more choices imo and had the rpg feel to it. These cookie cutter ones we have were its 123223 are just lame.

[Bakis]

Death rot stack %, wonder what the sim uptime on that would be early game :X

[Sunslayer]

I wish we had a few more unique Talents added. However, Chill streak in M+ might be great.
I like that we can get both the stun and Blinding sleet. I like that we will have way better mobility with both Wraith walk and Deaths Advance coupled with Death's Echo.
I'd like to see more things added. I really dont like the 3 point sinks before our main class Capstones. Other classes do not deal with that.

[Aedruid]

This is how things were...and these how things were going to be, but some people really had to have "classic" talent trees back

Not true. You learned 99% of all your abilities via class trainer. Talent points mainly enhanced your already existing toolset.

[Avatar Killer]

You are buying it not borrowing it. A borrowed power is something meant to only last temporary (powers tied to their corresponding expansion for example [azerite armor, artifact weapons, etc])

Wouldn’t it be more like a specialization? Such as you learn how to do job but don’t like it and learn a different one? Dunno.

[Sunslayer]

As a Frost DK PvPer I'm not loving the talent tree atm.
We get nothing but 2 abilities I already used in PvP, the Sindrigosa stun and Chill streak. That frees' up a talent slot but that's it.
Compared to Enhance, Frosts' play style is seeing no change for PvP.
Where are all the cool abilities like Bonestorm and Death syphon?
Other classes are gaining mountains of utility from other specs. All of our fun utility is Blood only.

They really should move Bonestorm to the Class tree at least.

As Enhance we get Earth shield on you and another.
Lightning lasso, Gust of wind and Thunderstorm. Thats just insane how much new utility the spec can get.

Frost DK? Same old stuff.

[froschhure]

Because they recreated the spell book as talent tree and sold it to the audience as a whole new concept. Feels super bad to skill spells you had for free before

[Xgirl]

We need to wait when we see it live in action

[Kithelle]

And it wasn't this. Maybe you should go back and read up on why they removed them.

They were removed because most of the talents didn't feel dynamic...you spent a point to improve so and so ability was boring, so they rolled a lot of things into the base of the class

But apparently people didn't feel accomplished and feel the need to push a button or two every few levels to feel accomplished, which is stupid

[Bakis]

Set Bonus: Bursting a festering wound grants your ghoul Vile Infusion, increasing their damage and attack speed by 10% for 5 seconds.

Anyone know how that affects multiple bursts within those 5s. Nothing happens, Resets the timer, or Additive?
Semi garbage nothing happens though additive would be way too strong. So a bit curious on how it will work.

[Ealyssa]

You're wrong. If you're a tank and don't care about Chains of Ice or having an interrupt?

Ha yes, tank don't care about snare nor interrupt...

Holy shit, why do why have clueless LFR heroes talking about game design ? It's the most idiotic thing I've read here in a while, congratz.

[Ielenia]

Ha yes, tank don't care about snare nor interrupt...

Holy shit, why do why have clueless LFR heroes talking about game design ? It's the most idiotic thing I've read here in a while, congratz.

You tell me, you're still talking about it.

I never said "tanks don't care about snare or interrupt". All that I said was "what if player X doesn't?" Because, y'know, not all players have the same priorities. And in a raid boss fight? It's usually the DPS that are put in charge of interrupting.

Before calling what others write "idiotic", please read what said others are actually writing.

[cordrann]

Wrong. Being forced to pick a talent that is useless to you personally because you need an ability further down that particular line removes choice. You're not choosing to buy those useless talents, you're being forced to because you require something further down that path.

For example: "I'm a tank. I don't need or care about Chains of Ice. I don't need or care for Mind Freeze. Plenty of interrupters and slowers in the raid already. But, man, I am being forced to get those talents because Icebound Fortitude, i.e. my tank cooldown, is further down that line." Where is the choice? I don't have the choice of not getting Chains of Ice. Or Mind Freeze.

Amazingly enough, IMO, this talent tree manages to be worse of all three iterations so far for the talent trees.

That's still a choice, even if you don't want the other stuff. You are choosing to invest four points to get IBF, no one is "forcing" you to. These trees aren't meant to be limitless choice on 100 nodes, that would be utterly impossible to balance which is something they already struggle with as is.

[Gurg]

The issue with old talent trees was that majority of them were "have/add % chance for.."
Wow, being at its peak back then used to pull new people en mass daily. Acording to Blizzard back then old talent trees were unintuitive, not fun due to most of them being % and we, in the end always ended up with cookie cutter builds.

First actual Talent rewamp and bloat cleanup arrived with Cata when talent trees were clean up and you had 41 points (first at 10, second at 11 and every next talent at every 2 levels) to work with, down from 71.
Cons of old tree was that people had to go and find information about the builds online (Preach, Asmon,...) and they were intimidating to some people, a lot of choises and fear of messing up.

Second rewamp, dubbed by Blizzard "Talents 2.0," arrived with MoP and it was quite different from the current one that we have. The idea was the same, it was just more clunky and felt strange.
It was also the time when Blizzard introduced crude "borrowed power" system with Legendary Cloaks. They were not "a must" but they gave nice boost to power, they had really nice visuals (one of the best IYAM) and by the end of expansion everybody get to have one to access last world boss added with Timeless isles patch.
That talent system was ironed out with time to get it form that we have with Shadowlands.
It also felt extremely unrewarding - oh wow, new row, one pick.
This also lead to stale gameplay. In PvP as soon as you see your enemies class you knew their toolkit and started working around it.
My personal opinion is that it felt WAY less rewarding and simply removed the fun aspect of the game - experimenting with builds.

Yea, majority of old talents were % based, yea, in the end we all ended up with cookie cutter builds, and yea, there was, from time to time, marginally broken build for which you had to put extra work into it but, outside of raiding, you had a freedom to play the game as you wanted.
I was personally loving DW unholy.

Now, on new stuff, while i understand fuss about it i dont see the reason for that fuss to be so loud.
Firstly, our talent trees are now split to Core and Spec.
They are separate investments and you dont have to pay anything to get anything there.

In core tree you can pretty much grab majority (if not all) spells that were core up to this point quite early. This is something that Devs stated multiple times up to this point.
You can also deviate and grab something out of the way, for instance as Frost grab Timmy for extra pressure in PvP, but also macro with Pact for burst heal. Etc, etc.
New system allows you to grab your clear core but also to deviate from it opening posibilities for minor variations in playstyles.

Second, spec trees. This is something that still needs work, specially on positioning of spells, pathing and, finally, their toolkits. I have my opinion about the release date, but thats a different topic. They also bring new playstyles to the table, allow us to build "old" builds but also opens an option to experiment with builds more.
In the end new system just opens an option for deviations in playstyles and adds illusion of more rewarding system since we will again end up with cookie cutter builds, ye.

With profession and talent changes i think that this is a refresh that WoW long needed to break the stale feel that it had for years (not counting in borrowed powers).
Will it be balanced on release - most probably not since release is around the corner.
Does it look fun - for me, yes.
Does it need more work - i think yes.
Do they look like a improvement - for me, they look like nice hybrid between Talents 2.0 (which we have now) and talents of olde.
Do i get all the fuss around the change - to some extend, yes.

This is also just first iteration of it, im excited to see how will it grow and expand further down the line.

And finally, borrowed power is gone (or at least it will be brought down by a lot). It felt SO BAD when we lost artifact weapons that i almost quit the game (for which i had running sub since Vanilla).