The War Within 11.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Ersula]

Not to mention in both change was restricted heavily - by gold, item drop, azerite grind, covenant choice etc., hence people were in constant panic mode if Blizzard manage to make them even. Now we can change any talent on the fly, for people that just want bis there will be no difference between copy->paste string between DF and TWW.

What I remember is most of that panic came once BFA was playable. Before that the concept of Azerite Armor & it's talent "wheel" was so vague nobody knew what to make of it.

[justwatching]

I kind of get the reaction to Hero Talents tbh. It's the kind of thing where you can immediately spot a number of serious issues that will creep up and wonder why it was greenlit.

Blizzard also just doesn't have a good track record with systems like that.

[Makorus]

This would make the most sense. Plus, since they start with a set of choices for each existing spec, I think they will add new ones periodically during the Saga in patches, just so people won't expect a whole set of three every expansion: For example, by the end of The Last Titan each class has six hero talent kits.Simple solution: Don't add a whole set of new ones every expansion. Maybe just one per expansion. There may not be one for your preferred spec but you'll still get one your class has access to. (That especially isn't so overwhelming when some of the hero trees are just "the exact same rotation but with mounted combat" or "the exact same rotation but with uncontrollable pets")

Clearly they'll come up with something new at the end of the Saga but that's 5+ years away. They don't need to have a plan for that right now.

Yeah, that's the thing. People really overcomplicate Hero Talents. You can easily do Hero Talents that apply for all three specs of a class. For the majority of them, it would just work, even right now. There's no reason why Spellslinger can't also include Fire, for example. Granted, there are some that just wouldn't work or make sense (Frostfire, for example), but generally, you can add 1-2 per class per expansion easily, and it's way, way, way easier to balance than additional main talents.

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It is not sustainable.

Just in TWW they are adding 39 Hero Talent Trees and over 450 talents (without the basic talent trees).

We have discussed this already. At some point it is obvious that they will have to revamp the system and star anew.

We will soon get more information about them. As a casual player I do not mind them too much, but I think that they should have been only cosmetic. In their current version they will cause problems.

It doesn't matter how many talents they are adding, because they are balanced around the fact that you have every single talent anyway. It's not like an actual talent tree where you can mix and match.

[Cherry123]

[Makorus]

There is no way they are releasing Alpha before revealing all the remaining hero talents.

[Murlocos]

I don't remember there being a lot of panic over Azerite armor before launch, but that was likely in part due to goodwill and remaining novelty from Legion as well as the fact that the system didn't even make it into beta until just before release. Obviously that explains in part how Azerite armor ended up as it did, but looking back at a transcript of the Blizzcon description of it is very funny in hindsight.

If you try a new item on, you have no progression setback whatsoever. You will always be moving forward.

That this ended up not only being false but also one of the major issues with the system really does make me wonder just how much internal testing time for BfA was sacrificed to work on Legion's patches instead.

[Cherry123]

There is no way they are releasing Alpha before revealing all the remaining hero talents.

they used to promote their expansion with book releases and cool videos. Now talent shows once a month, what's next? once a year they will tell you how much damage the boss will do with a left kick

[Makabreska]

There is no way they are releasing Alpha before revealing all the remaining hero talents.

It is perfectly possible. Did we have all Artifact trees, Azerite powers and Cov trees available since day one of testing? Also, they already have an unexpected extra work with Oracle rework. Will they postpone Alpha just to change this tree?

[Khaza-R]

I don't remember there being a lot of panic over Azerite armor before launch, but that was likely in part due to goodwill and remaining novelty from Legion as well as the fact that the system didn't even make it into beta until just before release. Obviously that explains in part how Azerite armor ended up as it did, but looking back at a transcript of the Blizzcon description of it is very funny in hindsight.



That this ended up not only being false but also one of the major issues with the system really does make me wonder just how much internal testing time for BfA was sacrificed to work on Legion's patches instead.

Also most of the issues from BfA stemmed from they striping classes of the Artifact talents and the GCD changes. Which you didn't realize how bad that was until you logged into the pre-patch. I doubt anyone would of even complained about Azerite traits (outside the initial awful grind) if the two former changes never happened.

[johnnyd2]

one more thing to look forward to about Alpha is actually getting more concrete info on how Warbands and the removal of the "Unlock Restrictions" for transmogs will work.

[Darkarath]

It doesn't matter how many talents they are adding, because they are balanced around the fact that you have every single talent anyway. It's not like an actual talent tree where you can mix and match.

Hard disagree. We have already discussed this.

Again, 39 Hero Talent Trees. Over 450 new talents. It does not matter if you get all eventually. Some talents have different choices. Some talents affect our baseline talent tree choices. Different Hero Talent Trees will obviously interact with other Hero Talent Trees in overpowered ways. All this without taking into account the problem of class fantasy, which might be way bigger than balance issues.

Simple solution: Don't add a whole set of new ones every expansion. Maybe just one per expansion. There may not be one for your preferred spec but you'll still get one your class has access to. (That especially isn't so overwhelming when some of the hero trees are just "the exact same rotation but with mounted combat" or "the exact same rotation but with uncontrollable pets")

One Hero Talent Tree per class each expansion? So we will go from 39 to 52. And baseline talent trees get changed and sometimes reworked each expansion. With DF even mid-expansion. So it will also affect at least some existing Hero Talent Trees.

Hope that you are right and they can make it without major issues, but IMO Hero Talents as they are now will bring unnecessary complexity and considerable balance issues. If they keep adding new ones they will only make the problem bigger and bigger.

[Raetary]

There is no way they are releasing Alpha before revealing all the remaining hero talents.

Why?
There is nothing stopping them.

It's not like all hero talents/classes will be available for testing from the get go, all at once, anyway.

[justwatching]

They actually went in and hotfixed Taivans size. Just why.

[Makabreska]

They actually went in and hotfixed Taivans size. Just why.

Possibly to fix some of his issues.

[Cheezits]

Taivans size will be reverted by the end of the day, guaranteed.

[Murlocos]

Also most of the issues from BfA stemmed from they striping classes of the Artifact talents and the GCD changes. Which you didn't realize how bad that was until you logged into the pre-patch. I doubt anyone would of even complained about Azerite traits (outside the initial awful grind) if the two former changes never happened.

I don't see how the GCD changes are directly related to the myriad issues with Azerite armor, but they definitely all compounded on top of each other to make the feel of the game worse.

[Dracullus]

they used to promote their expansion with book releases and cool videos. Now talent shows once a month, what's next? once a year they will tell you how much damage the boss will do with a left kick

You are still repeating this bullshit that expansion promotion videos/books happen same time as Alpha?

[Cherry123]

You are still repeating this bullshit that expansion promotion videos/books happen same time as Alpha?

you know, I remember the times before the expansion we had animated comics with sound, a book telling the story before the expansion, audio drama, character short stories, animated short stories. now it's just three animated short stories and that's it. I wouldn't be surprised if they give them up too.

[Makabreska]

you know, I remember the times before the expansion we had animated comics with sound, a book telling the story before the expansion, audio drama, character short stories, animated short stories. now it's just three animated short stories and that's it. I wouldn't be surprised if they give them up too.

Okay, we moved from "talent shows once a month" to "three animated short stories" in the span of a single page. Progress!

[Polybius]

But would you have been okay with classes remaining more or less the same for two expansions?

And beyond. Don’t fix what’s not broken. Use that dev time to add more specs and classes.