As an Evoker I'm pretty excited by the hero talents.
And as a whole, I quite like the system. But I'm not out here trying to do top1% players gameplay or doing the hardest possible content, and I certainly understand the complaints from those players perspective. Though I would argue that picking a race, a class or spec is already a gameplay choice tied to flavor/lore/aesthetics, and players have been living with those for 20 years.
I feel that, if you're that very small percent of players vying for the top of the top, you understand that fantasy and flavor will not be a priority.
I think that if the system is viable for most of the content and for most players then it's a success.
I think that, for this system, they should be more transformative with the hero talents offered, both visually and gameplay wise, while maybe having an option for a more generic improvement to the spec so it's not tied to a specific fantasy that the player might not want to play.
I do think they should go for more iconic stuff like blademaster, witch doctor, warden, etc in the future. If they're willing to give an active new spell as a core talent for these trees, I don't see why blademaster couldn't be feasible.
Honestly I think it's a wonderful way to add more fantasy, fresh gameplay, etc, without more bloat and balancing, considering it's a spec choice with limited points.
Im not going to write paragraphs about my problems with the system, but after seeing the blizzcon preview of mountain thane, and then readinf the pack leader tree. Its hard to imagine its going to look any good. I have a hard time imagining some of these looking good at all, and wish they didnt emphasise on the visual quality so much ich of them at the time. Maybe when we can start seeing some of them visually they will pleasantly surprise.
I feel that where the hammer is going to land when it comes to Hero Talents is less so relative power, and more so that some are just not that interesting thematically or visually.
Take the Deathbringer and Rider of the Apocalypse hero talents for instance. Why would the casual player choose Deathbringer for any reason besides it potentially being tubed higher, or marginally better for M+ or whatever, when Rider lets you have mounted combat and generally look badass?
Tuning can easily change hero talents from awful to meta in a heartbeat. But a hotfix is not going to make a visually unimpressive hero talents into an amazing one.
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You can easily tell that there were some standout ideas that simply ooze flavour and theming from every pore, and then a bunch of hastily cobbled together ideas made to fill the quota of a hero spec for every spec.
The world revamp dream will never die!
Laurel Austin did a lot of the art for Lords of War/Harbingers/Warbringers/etc. along with a lot of the earlier Hearthstone patch art. She left Blizzard a few months before Shadowlands launched. Her style was pretty distinct and defined a lot of that early-mid 2010s era of Warcraft to me.
That's the thing about inspiration, you can't count on it happening. Just because these aren't creative doesn't mean they can never think of better ideas in the future. Honestly some players won't want a hero tree that radically changes their rotation.
As for talents, I'm assuming we won't be getting more from 80-100, just more trees. That seems to be the whole point of hero talents; if you keep giving people additional abilities, you then eventually have to take them away, but like subclasses in D&D 5e, you can just keep giving players an infinite selection of alternative kits. Say, for example, by 13.0, Hunters have Dark Ranger, Packleader, Sentinal, Farstrider, Sharpshooter & Cannoneer. Then by the time the worldsoul saga is over, they'll be a level squish & they'll either keep doing this or design something entirely new.They have directly addressed that power creep & pruning is a problem. I guess maybe they haven't realized hero talents are their perfect out for this, but its a pretty safe bet that purpose is the entire reason they were created.
Since TBC, they've given players new abiltities so they can feel more powerful, but then a few expansions later realized they then had to take abilities away. Then the solution was "borrowed power:" New abiltiies you would only have for the duration of an expansion. Hero Talents is a third option: Add new abilities for players to play with, but you just have to choose between which ones you want: Variety over addition.
Last edited by Ersula; 2024-03-17 at 07:10 PM.
Idk, everything you said is your own interpretation because they never said they would do what you think they will do, the only thing that's for sure is that the hero specs are planned to be evergreen (atleast for the WSS). Going deeper makes far more sense than adding even more hero specs although they can't even design the ones from TWW properly because some classes just don't have enough stuff to make good, interesting hero specs with lore relevance. Also adding even more hero specs would be a balancing nightmare aswell.
Deathbringer could have cool scythe visuals that make it satisfying to pilot, but in general I agree with your points. Dark Ranger is a fantasy people want to play. Pack Leader, well, isn't. Slayer is kind of nondescript where Mountain Thane has a clear identity, even if one too tied to one race for me to feel entirely comfortable with everyone having it.
That said, to be fair there's wins and misses in terms of flavor with everything Blizzard adds; not every race, class or spec is equally popular after all. But I do think some of the selections are really kind of low-effort and they could have done better.
It is all that is left unsaid upon which tragedies are built -Kreia
The internet: where to every action is opposed an unequal overreaction.
I’m a main blood dk, so I will not even have the choice of rider. So I’m stuck with sanlayn or deathbringer. Deathbringer seems my choice so far.
But this brings actually a problem with hero specs up, that is probably not addressed yet: what if both hero specs don’t fit what I want for my character? Is there an option to opt out of hero specs, because either would be mismatch to what I want from my character? And if there is a option to opt out, what will the player get on the power side for not choosing a hero spec?
Example unholy dk:with sanlayn you get bloody effects and blood beasts, with rider you get the four horseman. I can see people who play unholy for the undead minion master fantasy. Both hero specs fail to deliver that and pull the fantasy away from that.
Last edited by Enrif; 2024-03-17 at 09:32 PM.
Thank you. I simply don't get why Blizzard would bring in something iconic like Keeper of the Grove or Dark Ranger as a hero tree and not continue them throughout WSS.
Also when you hit 12.0 where do you go hero talent tree-wise after you've flushed KotG and Dark Ranger? Again, those are some pretty huge Warcraft concepts.
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TBH, as an Evoker player I'm very excited about our hero talent trees. Supposedly Scalecommander: Bombardment has Black dragons flying overheard attacking the target with fireballs. That's pretty sick if true.
Well, it's almost Monday. Finally, we're about to enter a more exciting time of the year.
10.2.6
New Noblegarden stuff
S4 PTR and release
10.2.7 PTR and release
TWW Alpha
TWW Pre-patch
TWW release
A bunch of new Trading Posts, and likely some unexpected surprises along the way
All this in the coming 5 months or so.![]()