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

[Worldshaper]

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.

[Nibelheimy]

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.

This is a concern I have as well. For some specs like Blood DK it will only enhance the spec, but I hear the concerns of Destruction Warlocks who feel like they're missing out on anything relevantly themed.

[Teriz]

I look forward to Hover being an even more satisfying ability to press honestly. If Devoker is retooled to be more interesting to play then that would be a bonus as well.

Honestly, both Scalecommander and Flameshaper do a very good job of making Devoker a lot more interesting. Those trees are looking quite impressive.

[Annihilas]

Covenants prove otherwise. This lesson should have been learned by now.

Class fantasy is purely cosmetic. The visuals and sounds of skills, the armor sets, the legendary weapons (as in Legion).

Class fantasy is NOT having a skill that does 200% shadow damage in 10 seconds and every time it ticks it has a 15% chance of shooting and arrow from you ass that does 300% damage.

What matters is how a skill looks and feels. How it looks and how it feels has to match class fantasy. The rest are just numbers.

So Fire spec and Frost spec being separate specs that are good for different things, is bad because one does better damage in thing 1 than in thing 2? You're acting as if the game wasn't always like this... also the hero specs don't have that many fantasy altering parts to them compared to covenants or spell effects. You seem to be speaking very disingenuously here to be quite honest.

[Makorus]

So Fire spec and Frost spec being separate specs that are good for different things, is bad because one does better damage in thing 1 than in thing 2? You're acting as if the game wasn't always like this... also the hero specs don't have that many fantasy altering parts to them compared to covenants or spell effects. You seem to be speaking very disingenuously here to be quite honest.

For every fantasy-altering hero talent, there's like 8 that don't.

People get so hung up over "But my hunter isn't a dark ranger " when the problem with that isn't hero talents, but Dark Ranger.

[Annihilas]

Where did they say that? I'd very much like to know how they plan to accomplish that, because some of the hero talent trees are already stretching the class concept or is coming out extremely bland (like Demon Hunters) because of the lack of design space. I don't see a scenario where we have 6 hero talent trees per class. Some can barely handle 3.

I'm pretty sere ion or somebody stated something to that effect?

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This is a speculation thread. I am speculating. Secondly, you really think being forced to add bigger bedrock talents to every spec is better for balancing then adding a new selection of mini-gimmicks? Because I don't.

Same, I do not think it is easier to keep growing base trees either! Been there, done that, it would be utter insanity to keep trying the same damn thing without at the very least trying something new. It is totally premature to think this an irreparable mess when we only saw the first versions of these talents and we haven't had the chance to actually play them, nor have we seen their iterations. We may very well see massively iterated versions by the time we get our hands on these for testing. People are straight up being obnoxious and super fuciking unconstructive, the youtube baiters are not much better!

[Darkarath]

So Fire spec and Frost spec being separate specs that are good for different things, is bad because one does better damage in thing 1 than in thing 2? You're acting as if the game wasn't always like this... also the hero specs don't have that many fantasy altering parts to them compared to covenants or spell effects. You seem to be speaking very disingenuously here to be quite honest.

I do not understand the point that you are trying to make.

I did not say that different specs are bad. I said that Hero Talents, as they are now, do not seem like a good addition to the game for a variety of reasons, such us:

- Some are uninspired.

- Some do not fulfill the class fantasy that players want.

- Some add unwanted complexity.

- Some players might not like any Hero spec, and they will have to play one either way. The option of playing the spec that are currently playing will not be available.

- Some players will feel forced to play the best Hero spec and not the one that they enjoy fantasy wise. This is Covenants all over again. Not as bad as they were but a similar situation.

I'm pretty sere ion or somebody stated something to that effect?

Link to such declarations please? If it is true, Hero Talents will be a bigger problem than regular talents.

My guess is that the current Hero Talents trees will probably be reduced in Midnight, mixing some together and leaving mostly the active skills, while a new tier of talents will be added (Void Talents or whatever name they come up with).

Adding more Hero Talents as they are now would be a true nightmare. We can only have one active at a time, but they have to follow all the possible combination effects of new and past Hero Talents skill trees, making it impossible to balance.

[Nymrohd]

- Some players might not like any Hero spec, and they will have to play one either way. The option of playing the spec that are currently playing will not be available.

I'd say this is the crux. Before adding the cross spec Hero Talents, there should have first been some pure spec Hero Talents that just focus on the base class fantasy of the spec. This would have made TWW more boring since they would not have been able to trot out things like Dark Ranger which less face it, they needed it. TWW seems to have some very interesting systems but the impact is not strong for marketing and will only show up in gameplay imo.

If we started with a simple Master Marksman Hero Talent and then Midnight added the Dark Ranger and Sentinel it wouldn't matter because you could just stay a Marksman.

[Sondrelk]

I'd say this is the crux. Before adding the cross spec Hero Talents, there should have first been some pure spec Hero Talents that just focus on the base class fantasy of the spec. This would have made TWW more boring since they would not have been able to trot out things like Dark Ranger which less face it, they needed it. TWW seems to have some very interesting systems but the impact is not strong for marketing and will only show up in gameplay imo.

If we started with a simple Master Marksman Hero Talent and then Midnight added the Dark Ranger and Sentinel it wouldn't matter because you could just stay a Marksman.

This strikes me as a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing to me honestly. The same argument would have been prevalent if we got what you said, and only had to assume the actual interesting hero talents would come.

Also, some specs are not all that clear cut in what they are supposed to actually be about. Unholy DK could focus on either minions or diseases, but not likely both.

[Makorus]

I'd say this is the crux. Before adding the cross spec Hero Talents, there should have first been some pure spec Hero Talents that just focus on the base class fantasy of the spec. This would have made TWW more boring since they would not have been able to trot out things like Dark Ranger which less face it, they needed it. TWW seems to have some very interesting systems but the impact is not strong for marketing and will only show up in gameplay imo.

If we started with a simple Master Marksman Hero Talent and then Midnight added the Dark Ranger and Sentinel it wouldn't matter because you could just stay a Marksman.

That would have literally just been more talents.

The thing is: They could have added all the hero talents as just normal talents and affixed them to the end, just without a name. We've literally had Black Arrow as a talent before. But they didn't, because it's gonna lead to eventual talent tree bloat.

Why is one okay, but the other isn't?

If you don't like Dark Ranger BM, pick Pack Leader. If you care so much about performance, it wouldn't have mattered to you anyway even if it was just a "normal" talent.

People get so, so hung up on the names.

[Lady Atia]

I do not understand the point that you are trying to make.

I did not say that different specs are bad. I said that Hero Talents, as they are now, do not seem like a good addition to the game for a variety of reasons, such us:

- Some are uninspired.

- Some do not fulfill the class fantasy that players want.

- Some add unwanted complexity.

- Some players might not like any Hero spec, and they will have to play one either way. The option of playing the spec that are currently playing will not be available.

- Some players will feel forced to play the best Hero spec and not the one that they enjoy fantasy wise. This is Covenants all over again. Not as bad as they were but a similar situation.



Link to such declarations please? If it is true, Hero Talents will be a bigger problem than regular talents.

My guess is that the current Hero Talents trees will probably be reduced in Midnight, mixing some together and leaving mostly the active skills, while a new tier of talents will be added (Void Talents or whatever name they come up with).

Adding more Hero Talents as they are now would be a true nightmare. We can only have one active at a time, but they have to follow all the possible combination effects of new and past Hero Talents skill trees, making it impossible to balance.

Yeah I don't get it, we finally get stuff like Dark Ranger and now suddenly people want them to idk, give every class a light and void hero spec in Midnight instead of adding to these TWW concepts?

[Annihilas]

I do not understand the point that you are trying to make.

I did not say that different specs are bad. I said that Hero Talents, as they are now, do not seem like a good addition to the game for a variety of reasons, such us:

- Some are uninspired.

- Some do not fulfill the class fantasy that players want.

- Some add unwanted complexity.

- Some players might not like any Hero spec, and they will have to play one either way. The option of playing the spec that are currently playing will not be available.

- Some players will feel forced to play the best Hero spec and not the one that they enjoy fantasy wise. This is Covenants all over again. Not as bad as they were but a similar situation.

The point is that all the above points you have right there, are fully applicable to the current and past talent systems. These Hero Talents are appropriately limited to give little nuances to your current specs without continually stretching/building upon them like jenga bricks. You only pick one micro-tree and more trees can be added if players don't like certain ones, since the trees don't affect each other and don't need massive overhauls each expansion. More than likely tuning will be straightforward as far as I can tell, reason being... levels and gear can do most of it passively. How many times do you think they really need to touch these things, once they've made each tree as good as they can be? At that rate they'll just move on to make the next few trees until the majority of players are satisfied with their choices. Simple as that.

[Darkarath]

That would have literally just been more talents.

The thing is: They could have added all the hero talents as just normal talents and affixed them to the end, just without a name. We've literally had Black Arrow as a talent before. But they didn't, because it's gonna lead to eventual talent tree bloat.

Why is one okay, but the other isn't?

If you don't like Dark Ranger BM, pick Pack Leader. If you care so much about performance, it wouldn't have mattered to you anyway even if it was just a "normal" talent.

Exactly. Talent tree bloat will happen with both systems. Hero Talents do not solve that problem, glad that we are on the same page.

Potentially, though, they will add more problems as we are messing with class fantasy here.

Yeah I don't get it, we finally get stuff like Dark Ranger and now suddenly people want them to idk, give every class a light and void hero spec in Midnight instead of adding to these TWW concepts?

I certainly will not want that. The point that I was trying to make is that they are going to keep adding new talent tiers, not new Hero Talents specs as some are claiming.

Keep adding Hero Talents for existing Hero specs? Maybe. But the problem of eventual talent bloat remains. So nothing changes and this supposedly evergreen system will make the same mistakes that normal talents did.

Again, if this is their plan for talents until TLT is done, It is as good and as valid as any other plan. The execution is bad, though, that is my criticism, not that they are trying new stuff.

The point is that all the above points you have right there, are fully applicable to the current and past talent systems. These Hero Talents are appropriately limited to give little nuances to your current specs without continually stretching/building upon them like jenga bricks. You only pick one micro-tree and more trees can be added if players don't like certain ones, since the trees don't affect each other and don't need massive overhauls each expansion. More than likely tuning will be straightforward as far as I can tell, reason being... levels and gear can do most of it passively. How many times do you think they really need to touch these things, once they've made each tree as good as they can be? At that rate they'll just move on to make the next few trees until the majority of players are satisfied with their choices. Simple as that

Exactly, they are making the same mistakes of past talent trees. But potentially worse for the reasons already exposed.

They touch every skill in the game constantly in one way of another. They are continuously balancing them. Hero Talents are not isolated and no, you cannot add more without affecting the others.

A new skill "A" of a Hunter could interact with an old skill "B" of a Mage and make an overpowered combination for whatever situation. Hero Talents are more and more complicated than what a regular new tier of talents would have been. If you keep adding new ones the amount of possible insane combinations between them would be uncontrollable.

[Nymrohd]

That would have literally just been more talents.

The thing is: They could have added all the hero talents as just normal talents and affixed them to the end, just without a name. We've literally had Black Arrow as a talent before. But they didn't, because it's gonna lead to eventual talent tree bloat.

Why is one okay, but the other isn't?

If you don't like Dark Ranger BM, pick Pack Leader. If you care so much about performance, it wouldn't have mattered to you anyway even if it was just a "normal" talent.

People get so, so hung up on the names.

Honestly I think the only spec that is really fucked thematically is Marksmanship. As you said, BM has a more bland option readily available and I think the same is true for every spec except maybe Monk but then again, non-Pandaren monk never made thematic sense anyway.

[Makorus]

Exactly. Talent tree bloat will happen with both systems. Hero Talents do not solve that problem, glad that we are on the same page.

Potentially, though, they will add more problems as we are messing with class fantasy here.



I certainly will not want that. The point that I was trying to make is that they are going to keep adding new talent tiers, not new Hero Talents specs as some are claiming.

Keep adding Hero Talents for existing Hero specs? Maybe. But the problem of eventual talent bloat remains. So nothing changes and this supposedly evergreen system will make the same mistakes that normal talents did.

Again, if this is their plan for talents until TLT is done, It is as good and as valid as any other plan. The execution is bad, though, that is my criticism, not that they are trying new stuff.

Wait, hold on, how will talent bloat happen with Hero Talents, assuming they are gonna add more hero talents in Midnight and TLT.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand what people are talking about. No one is talking about adding more talents to existing hero specs, i.e. Dark Ranger, but adding more hero specs. So instead of choosing between Packleader and Dark Ranger, you choose between Packleader, Dark Ranger and Zookeeper.

I don't see how that would result in any bloat whatsoever, and I don't see how there would be any issues with balancing either because realistically, they wouldn't have to touch any of the old trees.

Honestly I think the only spec that is really fucked thematically is Marksmanship. As you said, BM has a more bland option readily available and I think the same is true for every spec except maybe Monk but then again, non-Pandaren monk never made thematic sense anyway.

For all we know, Sentinel might be thematically bland as well. As I said, the name doesn't really matter in the slightest if the actual gameplay doesn't really help with the thematic. Prime example: Shado-Pan. Yeah, name is obviously Pandaren-centric, but the gameplay doesn't really support that. It could be called Striker for all we know.

There's very few thematically-cohesive specs that limit you to a certain race/faction/archetype. Mountain Thane is quite Dwarf-centric, obviously Dark Ranger.

[Lady Atia]

The point is that all the above points you have right there, are fully applicable to the current and past talent systems. These Hero Talents are appropriately limited to give little nuances to your current specs without continually stretching/building upon them like jenga bricks. You only pick one micro-tree and more trees can be added if players don't like certain ones, since the trees don't affect each other and don't need massive overhauls each expansion. More than likely tuning will be straightforward as far as I can tell, reason being... levels and gear can do most of it passively. How many times do you think they really need to touch these things, once they've made each tree as good as they can be? At that rate they'll just move on to make the next few trees until the majority of players are satisfied with their choices. Simple as that.

But what do you do if you are happy with your choice in TWW but now with Midnight they release Void Hunter and it's just better for raiding and you have to switch from Dark Ranger to Void Hunter in raid and NOW you are unhappy?

[Makorus]

But what do you do if you are happy with your choice in TWW but now with Midnight they release Void Hunter and it's just better for raiding and you have to switch from Dark Ranger to Void Hunter in raid and NOW you are unhappy?

You always had to do that. You had to do it with talents. You had to do it with specs if you played something like Warlock or Arcane. And if you didn't play at a level where it matter whether you played Affliction or Demonology, then it won't matter if you play Dark Ranger or Void Hunter.

There's nothing you can do about that.

[Lady Atia]

You always had to do that. You had to do it with talents. You had to do it with specs if you played something like Warlock or Arcane. And if you didn't play at a level where it matter whether you played Affliction or Demonology, then it won't matter if you play Dark Ranger or Void Hunter.

There's nothing you can do about that.

Yes there is .... just build upon the specs already introduced and use a revamped glyph system to give people the cosmetics they want instead of having them tied to talents?

Like, I always loved the way diablo does it with their sets, enabling multiple valid play styles but if they aren't even gonna give us 3 tier sets at once with fated, I doubt we will get more than 2 hero specs, or 6+ as some of you think.

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Besides that, they stated they always want to give us a new talent point per level, just adding new hero specs that you can spec into instead of the TWW ones wouldn't give us that at all.

[Makorus]

Yes there is .... just build upon the specs already introduced and use a revamped glyph system to give people the cosmetics they want instead of having them tied to talents?

Like, I always loved the way diablo does it with their sets, enabling multiple valid play styles but if they aren't even gonna give us 3 tier sets at once with fated, I doubt we will get more than 2 hero specs, or 6+ as some of you think.

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Besides that, they stated they always want to give us a new talent point per level, just adding new hero specs that you can spec into instead of the TWW ones wouldn't give us that at all.

So they add Dark Arrow and most of the related talents to the normal BM/Marksmanship spec and you still have to pick them because they are still the best option. And then what?

Also, the new Hero Talents are not gonna be "TWW Hero Talents PLUS Midnight Hero Talents", it's going to be "TWW Hero Talents OR Midnight Hero Talents"

Where did they state that they "always want to give us a new talent point per level"? I mean, you can still get a Midnight Hero Talent point so you can use the Midnight Hero talent gradually as you level.

[Ersula]

Exactly. Talent tree bloat will happen with both systems. Hero Talents do not solve that problem, glad that we are on the same page.

Potentially, though, they will add more problems as we are messing with class fantasy here.

This is like saying adding Evoker or Augmentation is bloat. I compare hero talents trees to D&D 5e subclasses & they've never had to prune those. If they just keep adding Hero trees indefinately, I don't believe they'll have to prune them. They might prune the basic spec & class trees, because honestly they're overcomplicated imopo.

- Some are uninspired.

- Some add unwanted complexity.

Do you see how these issues compliment each other? For the most part your preferred spec has two options, a simple, unobtrusive one, & a dynamic, complex one. Grovekeeper, Celestial, Rider, etc all the ones that summon some sort of helper keep your rotation completely the same.

My guess is that the current Hero Talents trees will probably be reduced in Midnight, mixing some together and leaving mostly the active skills, while a new tier of talents will be added (Void Talents or whatever name they come up with).

Adding more Hero Talents as they are now would be a true nightmare. We can only have one active at a time, but they have to follow all the possible combination effects of new and past Hero Talents skill trees, making it impossible to balance.

See, adding them as regular talents makes this problem worse: If these new abilities are added to the basic talent trees as new branches you get builds that double-dip halfway into each: That's bloat. And I don't think anything short of a natural disaster is going to stop hero talents being the law of the land for the entirety of the worldsoul saga.

Besides that, they stated they always want to give us a new talent point per level, just adding new hero specs that you can spec into instead of the TWW ones wouldn't give us that at all.

They want to but that doesn't mean they will. Legion onward level cap increase didn't come with a new row of talents. Especially when they said they plan on doing another leveling squish in 14.0 - Seems to me the current plan is to have the TWW model up still going at that point. Only you'll get one point in both class & spec trees from 10 to 50 instead of alternating levels, then all your hero tree points from 50 to 60.