The problem with Hero Specs.

[Magnificent Madmartegan]

The "problem" with Hero Specs is going to be the same as it's been for any power source (talent trees, gear, covenants, legendaries, etc). Some big name min/maxer's are going to say that these are the "optimal" hero spec's to play as and 99.9% of the player base will simply follow it like always, not realizing that those "optimal" spec's and such are really only a "must" for the top 1%. You can choose to play as any spec/class/hero/whatever the next gig is and still do what you want to do. It might be "harder" or take more time but it is doable. Unfortunately way too many follow those min/maxer's and "optimalist" and say you "have to" play this and thus they are "forced" to do so and then turn around and complain about it. Take covenants as a example (since they were one of the biggest culprits), I have 3 paladins on my servers. 1 on my main server, 1 allliance allied race and 1 on my horde server. All three were different covenants. All three did raiding and lower level keys as that's my comfort zone. I did just fine doing that with all three of them, hell if I had a 4th I would have taken the 4th covenant. Yes there were differences in dps/healing depending on the covenant that specific paladin was but I was still able to complete what my goals were every tier. The only "problem" that's ever taken place in WoW is one that is player driven!!!

[Tyris Flare]

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.

Agreed. It was inevitable that not everything could be related to WC3, but a lot of these don't seem to have any concept to them at all. Or they are just a different name for what a class already does (like isn't Diabloist just Demo? Isn't Hellcaller just destro?)

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Ultimately if you are a min/max type player then fantasy has already left the window in my opinion. You will just go with what is best without question. If you are not a min/max player then fantasy probably will do just about everything good enough. Yeah, you won't be on Echo or Limits teams, but odds are probably already there (and yeah, many other very hard high pushing groups). Will losers try to meta slave people to certain things below that? Of course they will, but that is already happening. So it isn't really a hero talent problem. It is more a community driven one. With out without them it will happen. So, you either just accept it and min/max or accept getting turned down from some groups. This is the bed the community made many moons ago. So probably going to have to sleep in it.

[HansOlo]

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.

TBH - it's the most sustainable solution. I can only support it and I can imagine that this is the system for the next 3 expansions.

They are basicly acknowledging the player behaviour. They are not trying to solve anything. Just adding something very simple as passive skills and they will add more and more flavour over the years.

There is not a SINGLE game in the industry, where you wouldn't pick the optimal setup. Even in PoE with 1325 skills to pick from - it all boils down to the same builds. They know that.

[Myradin]

There is not a SINGLE game in the industry, where you wouldn't pick the optimal setup. Even in PoE with 1325 skills to pick from - it all boils down to the same builds. They know that.

Sure there are, single player ones. The problem is WoW is multiplayer which makes it for most people competitive. Either in PVP or in the latest parse. No one wants to be holding the team back.

[Ielenia]

My one beef with the Hero talents is that I have this feeling that Blizzard might have shot themselves in the foot in the long run. I mean, they call the hero talents "evergreen", but, really, what is "evergreen" about those talents that the original base talents are not? And also, that could make new classes more complicated to make. Because now you don't have just three specs to think about, you'll have those three specs and a set of hero specs to create. So six sets, each with their own fantasy and roles.

[SilverLion]

Sure there are, single player ones. The problem is WoW is multiplayer which makes it for most people competitive. Either in PVP or in the latest parse. No one wants to be holding the team back.

This is sort of a false dichotomy. The players who think this way are not generally the players whom it matters to. More often than not, you can play average and be just fine. It's when you want to break into the top 1% of players that this stuff starts to matter. I think the fact that regular players want to RP as elite pro gamers and demand the game have the fun balanced out of it is a bigger indictment of players. I've never once, in 15 years of WoW, ever felt the need to reroll or change classes or specs based on meta. Never got accused of sandbagging my teams either, because we were friends and not RPing as Method.

[HansOlo]

This is sort of a false dichotomy. The players who think this way are not generally the players whom it matters to. More often than not, you can play average and be just fine. It's when you want to break into the top 1% of players that this stuff starts to matter. I think the fact that regular players want to RP as elite pro gamers and demand the game have the fun balanced out of it is a bigger indictment of players. I've never once, in 15 years of WoW, ever felt the need to reroll or change classes or specs based on meta. Never got accused of sandbagging my teams either, because we were friends and not RPing as Method.

It's true - you can fiddle around and play however you want. I personally never swapped to meta classes.

BUT - you have a whole supplychain of youtubers and pages, that's going to tell you what build you should run. They exist because that's how the community works. It's a cultural 'problem', not a technical. And just with any setting, solving cultural dynamic is near to impossible.

DPS sim is a routine thing people are doing for crying out loud.

I think Hero Talents is the most elegant solution(no bloat - just passives). If they did ANYTHING else - it would be borrowed power from BFA again(and we don't want that). There is simple no other sustainble solution(atleast im not aware - they have attempted them all by now).

[Huggykaze2]

Gameplay should trump cosemtics and class fantasy. Having 3 hero spec trees be the exact same just a different skin is infinitely worse than what we have coming in war within.

Gameplay has been trumping class fantasy and lore for the past 20 years. See where it brought it.

[InfiniteCharger]

The problem after over 20 years is the design philosophy behind classes and talents that have always been problematic all the way back to vanilla. Players min/max because the system allows them to do so and Blizzard has always absolutely refused to go all in on a true talent tree where you actually get a big pay off in investment in a particular branch of spells and abilities. It is too problematic for them to balance so they would rather leave players with a very shallow set of talents and abilities so that they can more easily balance all aspects of the game around it. At a minimum, if they had just kept the theme of individual spells or abilities getting more powerful over time like the old vanilla talents you would have true "hero" talents considering that canonically players are at like level 150 by now. All they have been doing for the last few expansions is simply rearranging old talents and spells because they don't really know how to deal with players having such high power levels in a realistic way. And most of the reason for this min/maxing mentality is that instead of following the RTS or tabletop essence of the game, they are trying to make it into a competitive e-sport, which means the cutting edge guilds are going to exploit every aspect of whatever system they build for a competitive advantage. Technically a "hero" talent for level 150 would be something where you need to spend 70+ points in a particular tree to access some new uber spell or boost to an existing spell or ability. All of which reflects natural progression within the class fantasy. Having that for almost every branch of a tree in a talent system would always mean that classes have much more variety and viability but Blizzard have never allowed players that kind of freedom.

[FossilFree]

The problem after over 20 years is the design philosophy behind classes and talents that have always been problematic all the way back to vanilla. Players min/max because the system allows them to do so and Blizzard has always absolutely refused to go all in on a true talent tree where you actually get a big pay off in investment in a particular branch of spells and abilities. It is too problematic for them to balance so they would rather leave players with a very shallow set of talents and abilities so that they can more easily balance all aspects of the game around it. At a minimum, if they had just kept the theme of individual spells or abilities getting more powerful over time like the old vanilla talents you would have true "hero" talents considering that canonically players are at like level 150 by now. All they have been doing for the last few expansions is simply rearranging old talents and spells because they don't really know how to deal with players having such high power levels in a realistic way. And most of the reason for this min/maxing mentality is that instead of following the RTS or tabletop essence of the game, they are trying to make it into a competitive e-sport, which means the cutting edge guilds are going to exploit every aspect of whatever system they build for a competitive advantage. Technically a "hero" talent for level 150 would be something where you need to spend 70+ points in a particular tree to access some new uber spell or boost to an existing spell or ability. All of which reflects natural progression within the class fantasy. Having that for almost every branch of a tree in a talent system would always mean that classes have much more variety and viability but Blizzard have never allowed players that kind of freedom.

This is what annoys me about hero talents. I thought we were moving in the right direction with DF talents. You have a limited number of points and have to make tradeoffs to pick something. You also have to be mindful of the pathing through the tree. It's like a little puzzle to solve how to get the things you really want. I don't care about min-maxing, I'll gladly accept 95% of the potential damage of the "best build" to get something I really want like extra run speed or whatever. I have spent hours and hours, probably days or weeks really, just analyzing and nitpicking the talent tree of a single one of my 13 characters. In short, DF talents are everything I wanted.

Then they add the next expansion talents and go right back to "well this is the best build, so lets just give you the best talents, and all of them too, right out of the gate." Instead of playing the game and making choices for myself, which yes, could be *GASP* the wrong choice according to streamer xyz, I now get to have my hand held by Papa Blizz as they once again revert to their old pruning shears mentality as all choice and complexity is increasingly stripped from the game.

I don't care what "everyone else is doing," what the class guides say, or what some very loud person with a webcam thinks. I work all day where choices are made for me, and I come home at the end of the day and play games to finally make my own choices. Not only that, but what is considered "best" varies based on gear, and sometimes you'll sim yourself and the guide is totally off and that "wrong" talent is actually a dps increase. Not everyone has all BIS gear.

[InfiniteCharger]

This is what annoys me about hero talents. I thought we were moving in the right direction with DF talents. You have a limited number of points and have to make tradeoffs to pick something. You also have to be mindful of the pathing through the tree. It's like a little puzzle to solve how to get the things you really want. I don't care about min-maxing, I'll gladly accept 95% of the potential damage of the "best build" to get something I really want like extra run speed or whatever. I have spent hours and hours, probably days or weeks really, just analyzing and nitpicking the talent tree of a single one of my 13 characters. In short, DF talents are everything I wanted.

Then they add the next expansion talents and go right back to "well this is the best build, so lets just give you the best talents, and all of them too, right out of the gate." Instead of playing the game and making choices for myself, which yes, could be *GASP* the wrong choice according to streamer xyz, I now get to have my hand held by Papa Blizz as they once again revert to their old pruning shears mentality as all choice and complexity is increasingly stripped from the game.

I don't care what "everyone else is doing," what the class guides say, or what some very loud person with a webcam thinks. I work all day where choices are made for me, and I come home at the end of the day and play games to finally make my own choices. Not only that, but what is considered "best" varies based on gear, and sometimes you'll sim yourself and the guide is totally off and that "wrong" talent is actually a dps increase. Not everyone has all BIS gear.

Not to mention they got rid of spell ranks which you had to pay to train on at the class trainer which was another way of providing progression and adding potentially new boosts to skills and abilities.

[FossilFree]

Not to mention they got rid of spell ranks which you had to pay to train on at the class trainer which was another way of providing progression and adding potentially new boosts to skills and abilities.

That's true, it's more immersive too. You should have to train with someone to get new abilities instead of them just appearing out of the blue.

[Enrif]

That's true, it's more immersive too. You should have to train with someone to get new abilities instead of them just appearing out of the blue.

Eh, i disagree.
It's archaic design that fits in an economy with limited money. In an MMO that has a big money inflation the only thing this trainers would provide is a unnecessary walk back to the trainer every other level to get your skills. Like, imagine, great, new expansion, oh next level, lets head back to OG/SW, to learn a new skill and than back to where i was.

This system can work in a single player rpg. but for mmos it is not that great.

If they want to bring back meaning for trainers, they should actually provide training: like a mini mage tower, where you can practice different things of your class, while the trainer NPC can tell you how and when to use the actual abilities. This would be actually way more helpful than all those guides that most people just copy from, but don't get the practice to use adequately.

[Relapses]

If they want to bring back meaning for trainers, they should actually provide training: like a mini mage tower, where you can practice different things of your class, while the trainer NPC can tell you how and when to use the actual abilities. This would be actually way more helpful than all those guides that most people just copy from, but don't get the practice to use adequately.

We already know from Proving Grounds in MoP that this stuff has to be designed for the lowest common denominator and ultimately ends up being something that most players ignore.

[Teriz]

My one beef with the Hero talents is that I have this feeling that Blizzard might have shot themselves in the foot in the long run. I mean, they call the hero talents "evergreen", but, really, what is "evergreen" about those talents that the original base talents are not? And also, that could make new classes more complicated to make. Because now you don't have just three specs to think about, you'll have those three specs and a set of hero specs to create. So six sets, each with their own fantasy and roles.

That simply means that future classes need to be more robust and able to incorporate multiple concepts into it, like the way the Hunter class can incorporate Beastmasters, Dark Rangers, and Sentinels, or how Evokers are able to incorporate the 5 dragonflights which has a huge design space to work with.

I don’t think we’ll see another class as narrow (design-wise) as Demon Hunters again.

[loras]

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.

Speccs have been like that flavorwise at least since Legion, so this is nothing new.

And mechanically there has always been a better class, specc, build, etc.

Also it isn't even out yet, so maybe let them finish it before claiming it to be broken.

[Maljinwo]

Just dont follow the meta

[Ielenia]

I don’t think we’ll see another class as narrow (design-wise) as Demon Hunters again.

If anything, the amount of stuff that classes need to have just to enter the game indicates we're much more likely to get more "demon hunters" in the future. Less specs and hero specs = less mish-mashs = more cohesive identity.

[Jujudrood]

Hero Talents will be fine.
The issue isn't the talents themselves, it's that many people have gotten lazy and, instead of making a decision, they will look at wowhead or icyveins or whatever other source and copy an import string, then let the website tell them which buttons to press and when.
But like, they still do this for "suboptimal" specs; they make the choice of what they want to play, and that's where the "choice" ends for many.

The thing is, the content, outside of Top 100 CE, doesn't require anyone to play the meta.
It's the community that's optimized the fun out of the game, but if you just ignore that community and play what you like and learn to play it well, you can literally do any piece of content outside of the tippy top.
And let's face it, not everyone is good enough for the top 1% (else there would be no top 1%, just top 100%), no matter how hard you try. And that's okay.

I will venture a wild guess, call me a crazy man, that there will be a good amount of people just playing whichever one they want without caring about swapping from X to Y because of this piece of content or that piece of content.
Even if it's on the floor in terms of DPS rankings, they will still play it because they want to. And that's just fine.
Not everyone is a meta slave.
Hell, there's probably a substantial amount of players who set the spec the first time then never change it, even a node or two, regardless of the content they do and still parse purple and above.
There's at least one person like this (it's me, I'm that person).
I will be a Colossus, I will be 5% larger than I currently am, and I will set and forget, probably never to revisit it ever because I simply won't care enough to do so.