I'd rather have more impactful talents.

[Celement]

I would rather no talents... the community for better or worse has become heavily invested in min maxing at all levels of play. From classic wow to people only doing world quests most covenants had 80%+ of people all playing the same specs.

My solution would be to bin talents and instead make extremely flushed out specs instead. It solves one of the games newbie traps and cuts a lot of filler out.

[Chromeshellking]

Because balancing is still a thing Blizzard aims for in developing the game.


And yeah, I see no downside for it either... but that's not the point. It's the time Blizzard would need to come up with way more cool/interesting/impactful talents to replace basic ones like "reduce _____ by __%" or "increase _____ damage by __%" and that just takes time.





This is exhibit A as to why balancing is needed in this regard.

Yes but Ion has shown repeatedly that he has never once listened to what balances are needed. I do agree that sometimes a balance we may not like here or there is needed but...a lot of other classes I would pop on just for fun I can no longer even make heads or tails from their tree. Mage still needs tweaks

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Who cares where I'm spending points if those paths just give me boring passive effects with absolute minimal impact in all but the maxiest of minmax situations?

I'd rather just have the next talent up the path take "two points" than have to choose between two flavorless breadcrumbs first.

Or a suggestion I made was allow the flexing of forsaking part of the class tree and vice versa. Min max? Sure. dont want/need all the class shit that isn't niche enough for you? get rid of it? wanna just play what you love? Power to you.

Some classes faired better than others but not many.

[Nymrohd]

10% cooldown on your biggest heal is an impactful talent, you dingdong.

Only if you actually get to use it twice. So probably only on the endboss of the raid and on that one encounter in the raid everyone hates cause it lasts forever.

[Maxilian]

Well the idea of more "impactful" talents, was what gave us the MOP talent tree, and you saw how it went down. IMHO I liked it, it did had the issue of "this is the talent tree that you should take", but it is the exact same thing for Classic, and, lets be fair, its going to happen again with this one, just that we may have like 2 options for AoE and single target... again

[Nymrohd]

Well the idea of more "impactful" talents, was what gave us the MOP talent tree, and you saw how it went down.

It went down well?

[Lochton]

I keep hearing this.. What is "impactful talents"?

For if the new doesn't have enough, then the way old tree had even less, the current tree as well.

[Aydinx2]

It's to make the leveling experience better.

You still choose impactful talents in later nodes, which is interesting for max level players. But this new system is to help smooth out the leveling system and balance how those major talents are obtained (you can't go all the way left and then pick a bunch of talents on the right side).

[Lochton]

It's to make the leveling experience better.

You still choose impactful talents in later nodes, which is interesting for max level players. But this new system is to help smooth out the leveling system and balance how those major talents are obtained (you can't go all the way left and then pick a bunch of talents on the right side).

That is how I see the now tree as well. I enjoy how it looks. A little overwhelming after having had the simple version, and it is more advanced than the oldest.

[Rageonit]

I would rather no talents... the community for better or worse has become heavily invested in min maxing at all levels of play. From classic wow to people only doing world quests most covenants had 80%+ of people all playing the same specs.

My solution would be to bin talents and instead make extremely flushed out specs instead. It solves one of the games newbie traps and cuts a lot of filler out.

That's not exactly true. Very few people are actually invested in min-maxing. What most people do is called "parroting".
There's nothing intrinsically bad in copying proven solutions, and it's not exactly surprising people choose to do it. In the recent expansions, the amount of systems affecting one another made it nigh impossible to determine on your own what's "best" (at least not without the help of certain quality-of-life tools like sims etc., which is rather time consuming). So instead of trying to get math degrees to be able to solve it on their own, people look it up on sites that provide builds and advices.

Still, for people who enjoy to do it, min-maxing is part of what makes WoW fun. So in the reality we live in, it's a working compromise. Min-maxers have tools to min-max; and people who just want to do "good DPS" have plenty of places to go to for advice. I don't think it's THAT problemiatic for the newbies. Quite on the contrary - WoW has so many dedicated places for every class and spec that whatever you want to play, you can always find plenty of sources that help you understand the game. There are MMOs outhere with simpler systems that are more difficult to get into, because there's hardly any reliable info available on how to play them "properly".

[Lochton]

I would rather no talents... the community for better or worse has become heavily invested in min maxing at all levels of play. From classic wow to people only doing world quests most covenants had 80%+ of people all playing the same specs.

My solution would be to bin talents and instead make extremely flushed out specs instead. It solves one of the games newbie traps and cuts a lot of filler out.

I'd rather talents, and give as many options that it is almost a torment to make a meta/cookie build. I like ability unlocks and modifiers, and sometimes when looking at the Dragonflight one, I feel like it could be wider so you will realize that you won't reach them all but can make a path through for what you see.

Though, I'd rather the talent tree is level/combo locked instead of progression locked, so you could put points where you feel like, and feed into the combo option if something is interesting there.

[Dejiko]

You had more impactful talents, and the community REEEd and wanted the old shitty talent system back, so that's what is happening.

People keep using this word "community" to represent a consensus regarding an opinion.
How many people fall under this "community"? 5-10%? 25%? 50%?
Exactly how many people want the old talent trees back?

There is no single community even among WoW players, ask folks that mostly do pet battles how they feel about talent trees, you`ll
probably get a variety of answers, ranging between old, new and some hybrid variation that has yet to be implmented, along with some that might not care at all.

Are people on reddit the average representation of what players want? What about the official forums?

More on topic however.
They had a golden opportunity to maintain two separate versions of the game, both offering their own unique take on the talent trees among other features.
The modern talent trees are fine, if abit bland.
They also seem to have neglected the ability perks from WoD for some reason, which seemed a fine alternative to getting a new spell every expansion.

Also PvP only talents are a blight, and one of the worst things ever introduced. Taking baseline abilities from your kit, and restricting them to a single game mode.

[Nyel]

The problem with that, with the new talent trees, is that not every single node choice can be that way. I'd imagine it would take Blizzard years to make every single node that way.

But that was basically their reasoning to remove them in MoP and give us the new ones. Now we're back to - from a feels perspective - irrelevant talents that increase haste, crit chance or whatever by 2% or reduce an already lengthy CD by an amount that's barely noticeable.

[melzas]

Swapping mop styled talents back to trees full of fillers and abilities that used to be baseline is a horrible step back and epitome of fixing something that wasn't broken. We got rid of talent trees for a reason and this enormous waste of time spent on talent trees could be used for fleshing out what we already have instead.

Literally the worst thing about DF. See you in few expansions later when they once again realise talent trees are outdated and dumb and bring back mop talents.

[Al Gorefiend]

For example, the datamined Improved Lay On Hands. Reduces the cooldown by 10%.

I'm sorry, but I'm never going to notice not being able to use Lay On Hands between minute 9 and 10. This is a talent that's going to be important for minmaxing raiders exclusively, the average player is just not going to be realistically affected by it either way.

I feel like talents should be impactful, and important. A choice node that decreases Lay On Hands *or* Divine Shield's cooldown by 50%.

Hell, every node should be a choice node. Like PVP talents, many choices but few slots. But some that are more powerful than others. ...............Oh. Glyphs.

Hmm...

The current system has had total crap talents too. Allow me to point to Disc Priest final tier talent Lenience. Which reduces damage taken by allies with atonement by a WHOPPING 3%.

[LionSinMaikeru]

The problem with that, with the new talent trees, is that not every single node choice can be that way. I'd imagine it would take Blizzard years to make every single node that way.!

Personally, I disagree. I think it it entirely possible to make every node choice interesting.

Back in the day there was a site called "War Tools" where you could create your own custom talent tree for each class + share ones you created. There were thousands upon thousands. Dedicated fans literally researched + made their own custom talent trees and I remember that quite a few were positively received by the community. Many of which were filled with interesting choices.

If a single individual can do something like that, there's no reason Blizzard can't. Blizzard is a billion-dollar company. They could easily hire a team of experienced players of X class to brainstorm + implement interesting talents. They choose not to do this.

Another thing: I also disagree that % based talents like the one mentioned in the OP can't be interesting. I think if done correctly - which unfortunately the Dragonflight one isn't done as well as it should - they can be interesting / impactful. If I'm a Priest and my class fantasy is to be Holy/Shadow hybrid, I should be able to increase the potency of my heals + holy damage, and also be able to get some Shadow talents to reflect that. Or if I'm a Mage and I want to be a Frost/Fire hybrid, I should be able to specialize to reduce cooldown time of my Fire spells while also getting some of the defensive Frost talents.


The Dragonflight talent system has the heart of the original, without the flexibility that made it truly interesting. It would be more interesting if a class could spend points in EVERY tree, not just a specific one for their specialization. It's an unnecessary restriction that limits choices.

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Swapping mop styled talents back to trees full of fillers and abilities that used to be baseline is a horrible step back and epitome of fixing something that wasn't broken. We got rid of talent trees for a reason and this enormous waste of time spent on talent trees could be used for fleshing out what we already have instead.

Literally the worst thing about DF. See you in few expansions later when they once again realise talent trees are outdated and dumb and bring back mop talents.

No, they got rid of talent trees because they were too lazy to balance them properly.

MoP talent system was a horrible step forward that crippled player autonomy.

They brought the old talent system back because they (finally) realized a large portion of the player base actually did prefer them, despite Blizzard's constant gaslighting pretending otherwise. Classic numbers were thankfully a wake-up call to them.

[Lolites]

Well the idea of more "impactful" talents, was what gave us the MOP talent tree, and you saw how it went down. IMHO I liked it, it did had the issue of "this is the talent tree that you should take", but it is the exact same thing for Classic, and, lets be fair, its going to happen again with this one, just that we may have like 2 options for AoE and single target... again

i actualy thing mop talents worked better, bcs if i wanted to try ability i just tried it, im not going to try dozens of mildly different combinations, especialy not on alts, so cookie cutter it is

[Rageonit]

Literally the worst thing about DF. See you in few expansions later when they once again realise talent trees are outdated and dumb and bring back mop talents.

You're naive if you think that's down to "realizing" something. They didn't suddenly realize the talents we had since MoP were bad, and it's not why they decided to change it. They do it because that's how they want to keep things constantly changing and draw back people who had already min-maxed everythig to death. That's why we get changes every expansion, classes being reworded every couple of expansions, new systems introduced in different expansions. To mix it up, that's the whole idea. And they will never stop doing it, because that's their design idea. So yeah, quite possibly in a couple of expansions we will go back to a different system, because why not. The main idea is to keep things changing.

[Dundebuns]

For example, the datamined Improved Lay On Hands. Reduces the cooldown by 10%.

I'm sorry, but I'm never going to notice not being able to use Lay On Hands between minute 9 and 10. This is a talent that's going to be important for minmaxing raiders exclusively, the average player is just not going to be realistically affected by it either way.

I feel like talents should be impactful, and important. A choice node that decreases Lay On Hands *or* Divine Shield's cooldown by 50%.

Hell, every node should be a choice node. Like PVP talents, many choices but few slots. But some that are more powerful than others. ...............Oh. Glyphs.

Hmm...

I know people clamour for the old talent trees but I always thought going back wa sa duff move. They purposefully went to the three choice talent trees because of low impact talents. I guess they're now fully committed to just end game though, since one of the reasons was "When you got up a level and get +1% critical strike on your your fire spells, you're not really going to notice it".

[Rageonit]

I know people clamour for the old talent trees but I always thought going back wa sa duff move. They purposefully went to the three choice talent trees because of low impact talents. I guess they're now fully committed to just end game though, since one of the reasons was "When you got up a level and get +1% critical strike on your your fire spells, you're not really going to notice it".

They didn't go back to the old trees, the new ones are very much different.
One of the main differences is the allocation of baseline spec abilities to the class tree. Before MoP, the trees were ALL about boosting your core abilities + giving you a couple of new ones to boost a particular playstyle.
However, the new trees give you options you never had: to mix and match certain baseline abilities that were otherwise unavailable for certain specs.

People who have little knowledge of how the new talent tree work complain that it's unfun to put points into abilities that were baseline before. What they don't understand (or don't understand the impact of) is that in DF, they can have MORE abilities, and abilities they couldn't have before in certain specs - or can have less abilities if a scenario doesn't require them and put the points somewhere else. This creates options for some interesting skill combinations we've never seen before, even if we saw the skills/talents themselves. Like, before, you could never have two talents of the same row; and now it's totally possible, opening builds that were simply impossible before.

Of course for some people it's too much to process and they tunnel vision on "But, but I have to put some points into talents that are not super interesting!". Well boo hoo. They probably couldn't recognize an "impactful choice" even if it hit them on the head.

[Loveliest]

Paladin tree has the most points in 1% crap and 2% crap and the like. It's the paladin tree that is trash and they won't do anything about it. The rest of the classes have it better. So yes, they can do it, but they won't.