The problem with Hero Specs.

[Pyrophax]

I think that main problem is this heto talent are not feeling cool enough. Like look at diabolist - what can be more warlocky then summoning freaking pitlord?
Maybe Collosus warrior look okeish, i think? If that strike will have coll visuals and effect on gameplay.
But druid trees are just empowering your 1 spell? And thats all?
Give something to feel satisfying to use.
Give warrior call of ancients from diablo to summor pair of champions.
Give mage to rain fire from the sky. Big one, not fire shower.
Give shamans to feel UNLIMITED POWER. As palpatine.
If you empower treants with CotG spec - they should be massive, they should do a yon of damage.
If you elune chosen - do HUGE lazor from sky.
You now, HERO stuff, not boring plebs stuff.

To balance things out - best way, in my opinion, is to replace each hero spec accent to burst button. Like instead boring reincarnation if druid - give each of hero talent new powerfull upgrade.
Instead of wings of paladin - let them throw hugeass hammer on the ground that deal a ton of damage.
Instead of dark arrow boring dot - let it summon pair of undead dogs that deal shadow damage.
Instead of combustion - frostfire mage start raining frostfire meteors.
And so on and on.

[Relapses]

The only thing the Hero specs are missing in my view are incomparables - in this case, an incomparable would be a visual type of effect that changes the presentation of how your class/spec looks. In addition to offering keystone abilities and passive buffs, I think the Hero spec options should also apply marked visual effects to your character. There are a handful of these, such as the Warrior Hero talent that increases your overall size, but they seem few and far between. Examples would be Dark Rangers being surrounded by a shadowy magic effect when using their abilities, Keepers of the Grove seeing accelerated plant growth around them, Scalecommanders getting unique breath or flight effects, and so on.

It's possible this is something Blizzard is already cooking up. Colossus already gets the 5% size buff, it's not totally outta the realm of possibility. Fingers crossed.

[FossilFree]

Overall, I like hero talents. The one thing I don't like is how we can get all of them. It just feels like a return to predetermined builds like all the borrowed power systems. Even if evergreen, I'd rather we had more talents than points to spend, so we have to make choices and not everyone automatically has the same build. The only choice here is which of two hero specs to play, which is frankly not enough variability for me.

[Aucald]

It's possible this is something Blizzard is already cooking up. Colossus already gets the 5% size buff, it's not totally outta the realm of possibility. Fingers crossed.

One hopes so. It's early days, so anything could conceivably happen.

[Polgara]

The only thing the Hero specs are missing in my view are incomparables - in this case, an incomparable would be a visual type of effect that changes the presentation of how your class/spec looks. In addition to offering keystone abilities and passive buffs, I think the Hero spec options should also apply marked visual effects to your character. There are a handful of these, such as the Warrior Hero talent that increases your overall size, but they seem few and far between. Examples would be Dark Rangers being surrounded by a shadowy magic effect when using their abilities, Keepers of the Grove seeing accelerated plant growth around them, Scalecommanders getting unique breath or flight effects, and so on.

I think they should have just baked power into them they could tweak, but make them all small cosmetic choices: "Your duty to the light forms a shield upon your personage" (you can glam shield+2h as ret, this would also work with the holy tree too, but holy would just be able to wield their 2h and use SoTR). I think they missed a trick by trying to make the player power have this, instead of putting player power in it (so frostfire would have frostfire meteor or something, a HUGE nuke that works differently based on spec, but the rest would be a fireball with frost accents or frostbolt with fire accents sorta stuff). Things that could make me and Dave the Paladin stand out separately with only being cosmetic in choice.

This system is fine, I just think it's just putting 10 points down the main talent tree. Adequate.

[Ealyssa]

Why does this sound boring? Glyphs are dope. Class skins are dope.

Not as a expansion feature no, they aren't...

I'm totally for class skins and more visual customisation. But on top of new talents, not instead of them.

[deviantcultist]

Not as a expansion feature no, they aren't...

I'm totally for class skins and more visual customisation. But on top of new talents, not instead of them.

If they ever add class skins, they should treat them like allied races. In other words, create new classes that are reskins of existing ones instead of customization for a class you already play.

Let me give one example. If they were to add Void Paladins as a class skin, people who want to try it but never got invested in a regular Paladin would find themselves locked out of the most Voidy-looking Mage Tower skin, while regular old-time Paladin mains will be able to use it. It's completely unfair.

In my opinion, class skins will never happen and this new "hero talent" system is the most we'll ever get out of subclasses for existing classes. To me that's good, because gimmicks like class skins might be used as a cheap excuse to not add a new class when it's due.

[Teriz]

TBF, streamers are going pretty nuts over Scalecommander right now. I believe the Evoker trees are extremely strong and are going to be tuned down dramatically before release.

[Zodiark]

It's that they're locking more class fantasy behind swappable player power. Dark rangers are fucking awesome, but there's inevitably going to be a M+ fight where you need to suck it up and swap to Sentinel even if you hate them and your character is undead.

You're inevitably going to have to choose between the fantasy you like and the optimal build for your spec. That's just definitevely less fun than being able to pick the fantasy you want. These should either have minimal gameplay effects, like racials, and be locked permanently as a fundamental part of your character like race and class.... or they should just be 100% cosmetic.

Listen. I see your point. I agree that to some extend Hero Talens and the Class Fantasy that they are attached to should have some degree of separation in an ideal world. However the point you make about some M+ Fight where you need to swap to Sentinel or a different hero talent tree, etc is flawed.

I had a friend once who loved playing Fire mage. Even when they weren't the best spec. It was his jam. As a result he actually became very good playing the spec in all situations because that for him was what "his" Mage fantasy was supposed to be. As such he was able to clear pretty much whatever content he set his mind to. He was always invited to groups because he knew his class and spec very well and because he focused solely on that spec he never had a problem with mechanics. Sure there were ups and downs as the spec went through different iterations but he always stayed the course.

My point is that you can play whatever you want if that's really the vision you have for your character. I'm an Alt-o-holic so I wish I had that kind of focus.

In WoW there has ALWAYS been a bit of a seperation from what is technically best, numbers wise and what is your class fantasy to you. Some people only want to see high numbers and some don't.

[Magistrate]

It's that they're locking more class fantasy behind swappable player power. Dark rangers are fucking awesome, but there's inevitably going to be a M+ fight where you need to suck it up and swap to Sentinel even if you hate them and your character is undead.

You're inevitably going to have to choose between the fantasy you like and the optimal build for your spec. That's just definitevely less fun than being able to pick the fantasy you want. These should either have minimal gameplay effects, like racials, and be locked permanently as a fundamental part of your character like race and class.... or they should just be 100% cosmetic.

Totally agree. They didn't listen to anyone with Covenants and it was literally the same issue. Then they fixed it after multiple patches, said they learned their lesson, and here we are again.

[Kiwifarms]

Totally agree. They didn't listen to anyone with Covenants and it was literally the same issue. Then they fixed it after multiple patches, said they learned their lesson, and here we are again.

They clearly learned their lesson each class only has two branches with each tree and you can respec them on the fly. Shadowlands big fuck up was you effectively needed 3 toons of the same class if you wanted to effectively pvp,raid, and mythic plus at high levels.

[Relapses]

Totally agree. They didn't listen to anyone with Covenants and it was literally the same issue. Then they fixed it after multiple patches, said they learned their lesson, and here we are again.

These aren't Covenant abilities. By design, they're nowhere near as powerful and they are easily swappable.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I mean really in the end MOST (not all) are just kinda things that happen. Maybe make you shuffle a talent or two around from current meta.. but they just kinda happen off a couple things. So really its just an expansion of a couple abilities. It just flavor for the most part.

[Relapses]

I mean really in the end MOST (not all) are just kinda things that happen. Maybe make you shuffle a talent or two around from current meta.. but they just kinda happen off a couple things. So really its just an expansion of a couple abilities. It just flavor for the most part.

100%.

I think the collective WoW population is so damaged by what Covenants did that anything that even seems close is enough for them to sound the alarm. That sucks, really, because this is actually one of the cooler things Blizzard has done with the game and I've seen a lot of polarizing, overwhelmingly negative feedback from people who are functionally incapable of critical thinking.

[Kilpi]

Ok... Wouldn't this apply to a lot of normal specs though? Especially for DPS. Frost mage should be cosmetic because fire spec might be better.

[Advent]

It's possible this is something Blizzard is already cooking up. Colossus already gets the 5% size buff, it's not totally outta the realm of possibility. Fingers crossed.

One of the shaman hero specs is Stormbringer. If I'm not surrounded by a small wind and lightning effect when I choose that spec, I'm going go be severely disappointed.

[catalystical]

100%.

I think the collective WoW population is so damaged by what Covenants did that anything that even seems close is enough for them to sound the alarm. That sucks, really, because this is actually one of the cooler things Blizzard has done with the game and I've seen a lot of polarizing, overwhelmingly negative feedback from people who are functionally incapable of critical thinking.

Yep. The problem with Covenants is we were punished for switching them. The whole expansion's modus operadi was to punish the player for trying to play the game and that has tainted Covenants.

[Swnem]

Overall, I like hero talents. The one thing I don't like is how we can get all of them. It just feels like a return to predetermined builds like all the borrowed power systems. Even if evergreen, I'd rather we had more talents than points to spend, so we have to make choices and not everyone automatically has the same build. The only choice here is which of two hero specs to play, which is frankly not enough variability for me.

I partially agree. I don't like the passive talent picks. They aren't adding interesting choices. They should eliminate the sides of the trees and just have the choice talents. Like 3 of them plus the first and last big talents. Just a line, not a tree. A bit like a smaller version of the old talents.

[Fantazma]

The problem with hero talents is so clean to me..!
They are sellimg us HERO CLASS FANTASY...
B
U
T....
giving us just a poor version of "Shadowlands comduit system"
S
A
D....

[Jastall]

My issue is that the names and thematics are kind of all over the place.

Some are very generic with no basis in prior lore- what's a Slayer (besides an existing title for Demon Hunters)? What's a Colossus? What's the difference between a Hellcaller and a Diabolist?

Some are fairly self-explanatory or rooted in existing lore without being quite so tied to a race or group. Frostfire mage mixes frost and fire, easy. Farseer is a longstanding element of the Shaman class, Rider of the Apocalypse is quite evocative of the Death Knight fantasy. Those are the ones I prefer.

And then some are quite tied to existing fantasies. Those are the ones that generate hype, but it's kinda weird to have an Orc be a Dark Ranger, a Forsaken be a Mountain Thane, a Gnome be a San'layn or a Draenei be a Deathstalker.

I won't speak of design or balance before we see the full picture. But Blizzard caused a lot of confusion from the onset by selling 10 new, kinda-but-not-really special talents as something akin to sub-classes which they don't seem to be and probably won't be supported enough for people who want to actually play stuff like a Dark Ranger.