About the talent trees

[Sagenod]

I noticed how the top of every spec's talent tree has only one choice, and it's one of the spec's most important abilities. This doesn't make much sense to me. Why require a talent point when you have no other option than it? They might as well make those abilities baseline and remove the talent point or allow us to spend it elsewhere. There is no gameplay choice to be made unlike the top of the shared class trees, which have options from each spec.

"Illusion of choice." Anyone remember that? WoW is coming full circle lol

[Myradin]

While I agree illusion of choice is big, its probably meant to help ease new players into the talent system. The talents in this case are 'chosen' by the spec selection, which happens at the same level.

[potis]

Its on purpose so you wont have someone completely braindead skipping the main ability of the spec completely.

Its the same thing with "You are now level 10, these are your main abilities , use them when you pick this spec!"

Right now Fury Warrior can do this, for some reason Rampage is a choice and it can be skipped. Oh boy, i cant wait to play with those Fury Warriors that can do this!

The talent trees are mostly going well, some specs have actual choices that can be switched around, havent checked Prot Paladin lately but that was one of the obvious many decent choices etc.

The crying should start end-october to be honest when most things will be set in stone.

[Toby451]

I noticed how the top of every spec's talent tree has only one choice, and it's one of the spec's most important abilities. This doesn't make much sense to me. Why require a talent point when you have no other option than it? They might as well make those abilities baseline and remove the talent point or allow us to spend it elsewhere. There is no gameplay choice to be made unlike the top of the shared class trees, which have options from each spec.

"Illusion of choice." Anyone remember that? WoW is coming full circle lol

Please give an example of a skill tree where the first couple of choices are not mandatory due to... obvious reasons.


That is why the most obvious choices are at the top of the tree and the actual choices happen in the middle and end....





Also, you DO NOT want to be making 61 actually meaningful choices every time you respec. It would be an extremely tedious process.

[Shakzor]

Please give an example of a skill tree where the first couple of choices are not mandatory due to... obvious reasons.


That is why the most obvious choices are at the top of the tree and the actual choices happen in the middle and end....





Also, you DO NOT want to be making 61 actually meaningful choices every time you respec. It would be an extremely tedious process.

Outlaw and Subtlety start with atleast 2 starting points, atleast in the wowhead talent calculators

[huth]

Outlaw and Subtlety start with atleast 2 starting points, atleast in the wowhead talent calculators

In the class tree. This is about the other one.

Still, pretty much all abilities post level 10 come from the talent trees, so i fail to see the issue. If you got that ability for free, chances are you'd just get one less talent point.

[Shakzor]

In the class tree. This is about the other one.

Still, pretty much all abilities post level 10 come from the talent trees, so i fail to see the issue. If you got that ability for free, chances are you'd just get one less talent point.

Subtlety and Outlaw both seem to have more than 1 mandatory spec starting points (as in the subtletly and outlaw tree, each), unless WoWhead talent tool has outdated data

https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/rogue/subtlety

https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/rogue/outlaw

[KrayZ33]

I noticed how the top of every spec's talent tree has only one choice, and it's one of the spec's most important abilities. This doesn't make much sense to me. Why require a talent point when you have no other option than it? They might as well make those abilities baseline and remove the talent point or allow us to spend it elsewhere. There is no gameplay choice to be made unlike the top of the shared class trees, which have options from each spec.

"Illusion of choice." Anyone remember that? WoW is coming full circle lol

For players getting to know the system this is clearly better than having 10 starting points to choose from, spreading out to multiple choices each..
Not sure why you focus so much on the first skill point when a few minutes/hours later (ingame time) it already branches off.

[Stricks]

I noticed how the top of every spec's talent tree has only one choice, and it's one of the spec's most important abilities. This doesn't make much sense to me. Why require a talent point when you have no other option than it? They might as well make those abilities baseline and remove the talent point or allow us to spend it elsewhere. There is no gameplay choice to be made unlike the top of the shared class trees, which have options from each spec.

"Illusion of choice." Anyone remember that? WoW is coming full circle lol

Well they are baseline for the spec, not the class. That's why they are on the spec side of the talents. Not sure how that doesn't make sense.

[rrayy]

Outlaw and Subtlety start with atleast 2 starting points, atleast in the wowhead talent calculators

BM Hunters start off with Kill Command automatically given to them in the tree without costing a point, so they effectively get an extra point.

[Shakzor]

BM Hunters start off with Kill Command automatically given to them in the tree without costing a point, so they effectively get an extra point.

i think all specs start with a talent point in the class tree, not just bm hunters. For example, Enhancers automatically seem to get Chain Lighting and Maelstrom weapon or Boomkin gets Starfire and Starsurge
It's just odd that those two rogue specs start with more than 1 "choice" in the spec tree when everyone else HAS to start with their signature move

[huth]

BM Hunters start off with Kill Command automatically given to them in the tree without costing a point, so they effectively get an extra point.

Everybody gets that. It's part of the design. It was even part of the original announcement.

[huth]

Those talent trees do not really matter. Most players will go to wowhead or icyveins to simply pick a cookie cutter build for their class.

With the sharing system they might not even have to read it. But that would happen either way. It's part of the reason Blizzard went back to more of a tree style; people will do cookie cutter anyway, there's no point trying to avoid that. These trees are mostly for the people that enjoy trying stuff out or hyperspecialising for specific fights.

[Gumble]

BM Hunters start off with Kill Command automatically given to them in the tree without costing a point, so they effectively get an extra point.

Their trees do require them to spend like 3-6 pts just on buffs to KC, so it probably evens out with how many pts they have to put into it.

[huth]

My guess is blizzard changed that system again simply because they needed a cheap main feature for Dragonflight. Nowadays the devs do not make changes based on logic, but simply based on the fact to have a feature to sell.

...that would still be a kind of logic.

[shadowlandsx]

so basically they give you some points for free but they dont take away from the other point you need ,, so we now go to lvl 70 they give us 5 free point we spec the rest .. do they do it for both trees or just the one tree?

[KrayZ33]

If they want to add new features they should add new gameplay components. And no, new gameplay features do not imply broken borrowed power systems.

Why do you think the class tree is in any way whatsoever related to how many new gameplay features they can or would have added.
This is basically just class-balance and tuning in a different format and nothing else.

"No gameplay feature, end game option or main-selling point was hurt while creating this"

People are going to have some fun with it and that's it.
Some more, some less.
Overall I believe we get to choose between way more skills and abilities than before and I can say for certain already that the class and spec I'm playing turned from "1 talent option for everything" into clear AoE/ST or a mix depending on the content. So it actually matters, if the trees are what allowed them to do it more easily.

In the end however, this is just a different version of a class rework you have been getting and seeing in every single expansion. So it's not like you are looking at something they sell now and haven't been selling in the past.

[KrayZ33]

Sounds like a fun thing to do to go to icy veins and pick "cookie cutter build". Most people will just do that. A few theorycrafters will have their fun. But they are an even smaller minority than mythic raiders. Oh, btw., the game director of WoW is a former elitist jerk, a theorycrafter himself. What a coincidence!

And yes, surely the devs could have spent that time to implement useful gameplay. Last i checked Blizzard did not add any useful casual gamer instanced solo or small group pve gameplay like Torghast or Islands or Warfronts to Dragonflight yet.

Yeah... no.

someone who min-maxes is also a theorycrafter. If they are the minority, it means most people will pick the talents they like to play with, what's their incentive to follow icy-veins guides? You shouldn't assume whatever you are doing is what people are doing.

And no, they wouldn't have added "useful gameply", as you put it, instead of this.
Class balance and rework has nothing to do with game systems or features.
They wouldn't have added Thorghast 2.0 (or whatever) instead of class trees, don't kid yourself

[Nymrohd]

Those talent trees do not really matter. Most players will go to wowhead or icyveins to simply pick a cookie cutter build for their class.

Then those players will be bad. Because with the new talent system, far more so than with the current one, you will be rewarded for switching talents per type of content if not per encounter significantly. Switching utility talents depending on the dungeons or affixes or specific encounter mechanics for raids, changing your damage profile to better suit the encounters, both will be common. I've spend time with multiple talent trees and in every one of them I will want to switch talents around depending on encounter. So if you try to pick a cookie cutter spec and stick with it, be my guest, you'll suck. The trees reward experimentation a lot.

As for Icyveins figuring things out immediately; In Legion were complexity between talents, artifacts and legendaries was significant (As will be with this talent system) plenty of specs had multiple viable playstyles and it took people a while to ever figure out the best playstyle. Not even to take into account that the optimal playstyle for any encounter also depends on player skill and many players will perform far better with a simpler rotation that has a lower cap that they can reach instead of a complex rotation where they will likely be performing near the skill floor.

[Nymrohd]

I'd rather believe most people care about their playstyle and will fool around. Oh they might play the optimal build (which as I said, will change) for harder content but they will have fun fooling around while doing things in the world or lower difficulties. And we will definitely see some very inventive builds coming around for specific encounters or from people who are into soloing. I am very excited about Tankadin soloing potential with these talents.