What is the future of Hero Talents?

[huth]

Exactly. And the worst part of this is that it was intentional. The devs have said this in several interviews. At first, the plan was to just have buffs with cool names. Then player feedback showed the gross error in Blizzard's marketing and they had to start making changes.

Players really wanted to delve deeper into the Hero Specs. And the devs only started to accept this feedback recently. The Dark Ranger was the first to get new animations due to massive complaints. I believe there are many more to come because the discontent with the monk's shadopan or the hunter's pack leader and several other hero specs... these are things that the devs will not be able to ignore forever.

Because players have this overblown image of what is ultimately just a simple extension of the talent trees intended to minimise combinatorial explosion. That they are hesitant to do more is not surprising; this is not in line with what they're actually trying to do.

[baskev]

snip

think they will and need to be reworked.
I have a balance/resto/gaurdian druid a prot/retri paladin and a disc/shadow priest. And all i see so far is 1 spell that gets mega buffed ( per hero talent tree). And that spell needs to be your focus in your build and it gives a lot of power to those ( and supporting spells). meaning your whole build is build around 2 spells. So it makes part of the normal talent tree pointless.

They really need to change that. Take my retri paladin. I looked at its spell. And it was a spell that buffs ashes spell. So to use it i had to take pretty much any spell that buffed it. Or i would be missing out a chunck of damage.
So it changed 1 spell into a other, then that spell into a other. And now i end up with a avangers wrath ( crusade) everytime i use it :S.

[shade3891]

Well they could add even more hero spec per class? Giving the players more choice. Many classes could use updated visuals or small changes.

For example, Serpent Sting into Shadow Sting, dealing shadow damage instead. Arcane Shot into Dark Shot dealing shadow damage instead. Chimeara Shot into Wraithfire Shot, dealing fire and shadow damage.

[KrayZ33]

Either more specs or the old ones will just be found in one way or another in the talent trees of certain specs.
Just like how it was done from Vanilla onwards with reworks, tier sets or addon-powers (i.e. covenant) .

[Glorious Leader]

Because players have this overblown image of what is ultimately just a simple extension of the talent trees intended to minimise combinatorial explosion. That they are hesitant to do more is not surprising; this is not in line with what they're actually trying to do.

MAJOR EXPANSION FEATURE... but fucking hold your expectations folks...

cheapest fucking expansion ever

[Mic_128]

As a demon hunter, both hero spec's seem kinda "... okay" to me. Nothing screaming out *demon hunter* but I guess that's just what you get when the class hasn't really had the same history as hunters, for example.

[Floot]

So far my impression is that hero talents appear easier to use as a tool to balance performance of certain classes than their general spec trees. And in my opinion it also shows in the warcraft statistics where the vast majority of specs all have numbers that lay very close to each other, compared to previous expansions.

Other than that, I wonder if they'll keep adding new nodes to hero talents in future expansions, or if it might just be easier and more interesting to create new ones for classes. Or maybe the focus will shift to something else...

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As a demon hunter, both hero spec's seem kinda "... okay" to me. Nothing screaming out *demon hunter* but I guess that's just what you get when the class hasn't really had the same history as hunters, for example.

Oh, I'm not a dedicated Demon Hunter player or anything, but I found that the Fel-Scarred hero tree really emphasised the Demon Hunter feeling. Makes me feel more demon-hunter-y than before, which is a good thing, because the theme of the class is probably what interests me the most about it. The gameplay itself has always managed to put me to sleep with how simple the DPS rotations or priorities are.

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Personally, I want the hero talents to focus much more on the visual (and sound) aspects of playing a class.

A holy priest getting glowing eyes, the void orbs on shadow priests, the dragons flying over as an evoker, the demon form as a warlock etc. etc. those things are just really cool.

[Fantazma]

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Personally, I want the hero talents to focus much more on the visual (and sound) aspects of playing a class.

me too
/10chars

[AtomR]

The same thing that happens to all talents. They will get baked into the talents tree and new ones will arise, and variations of the same thing. I don't really understand how people think these talents in any way "enrich class lore". Maybe as a resto druid who feels I don't have an option other than Keeper of the Grove and the adaption to the changes hasn't been any different than when I was forced to use "Adaptive Swarm" so it's feels the same as minor changes that always happen in new expansions.

[Lahis]

They will keep expanding Hero Talents untill TLT at which point we will hit lvl 100 and have 31/30/30 talent trees. 14.0 will come with the next level squish, halving us back to 50 (before levelling back to 60 for the 14.0 endgame) and revamping talents after the cut number of talent points.

[RobertMugabe]

They will probably add more Hero Specs and/or replace, shuffle them around etc.

I bet that they will keep increasing the level cap until the last titan, which will be lvl100 before they make a squish again in the next "saga".

They have several options here: Add more hero specs and make the players get 1 extra hero spec or just make the hero talents wider. Or maybe they could do something like this: Add new hero specs, add 5 talent points and 5 hero spec points in each new expansion until the worldsoul saga is over.

After the Worldsoul Saga they will definitely do a level squish and a revamp of the talent system.

[Fixxit the Gnome]

I'd rather wish they made Hero Spec to class skins, with different questlines and a cosmetic progression.

If they start removing/changing between each expansion, we end up with the same issues as borrowed power, and if they add it gonna become bloated and a mess to balance.

As they are now, they have sort of the same problem that covenants had: people are forced to pick the most optimal choice because wow players are obsessed with meta and tier-lists.

Just let me vibe with my class fantasy, yo.

[FAILoZOFF]

Hopefuly nowhere. They don't really fit in.

[Glorious Leader]

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me too
/10chars

See adding cool effects, animations and skins requires actual investment and would countet the effective value of hero talents for the developers. Selling a major feature while.keeping costs as low as possible.

[pacotaco]

DH hero talents finally got new animations and I love our new playstyle. Fel-Scarred, that is. I haven't played Aldrachi.

What new anims added to fel-scarred? Because currently on live it's just a "fel explosion" FX and nothing more. And mechanically just feels like it's just the baseline, but with extra AOE dmg. Barely change on gameplay or rotation or something compared to last expansion.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

What new anims added to fel-scarred? Because currently on live it's just a "fel explosion" FX and nothing more. And mechanically just feels like it's just the baseline, but with extra AOE dmg. Barely change on gameplay or rotation or something compared to last expansion.

Changing Meta and Fiery Brand from our main defensive CDs into integral parts of our DPS rotation is absolutely game-changing. Finding ways to make that work while maintaining survivability at crunch time is a fun challenge.

[pacotaco]

Changing Meta and Fiery Brand from our main defensive CDs into integral parts of our DPS rotation is absolutely game-changing. Finding ways to make that work while maintaining survivability at crunch time is a fun challenge.

Ah, as Vengeance, yeah. I was meaning as Havoc.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Ah, as Vengeance, yeah. I was meaning as Havoc.

oh yeah, I can see that

[loras]

I kinda figured they'd just be adding more hero talent trees.
Make it a sorta horizontal progression. Maybe add more cosmetic stuff to the existing ones.

And if stuff is too mandatory or something they fold it into the normal trees / speccs.
Allows 'em to experiment with new gameplay stuff.

[Eurhetemec]

I don't really understand how people think these talents in any way "enrich class lore".

I think it's highly variable - some classes have Hero Talents which do seem to kind of add to the lore and tell you a bit more about that class, and what exactly is going on with them - DK and Monk, for example. But overall the feature feels very much like something bigger that got cut down, whether or not that's actually true.

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They will keep expanding Hero Talents untill TLT at which point we will hit lvl 100 and have 31/30/30 talent trees. 14.0 will come with the next level squish, halving us back to 50 (before levelling back to 60 for the 14.0 endgame) and revamping talents after the cut number of talent points.

They will probably add more Hero Specs and/or replace, shuffle them around etc.

I bet that they will keep increasing the level cap until the last titan, which will be lvl100 before they make a squish again in the next "saga".

They have several options here: Add more hero specs and make the players get 1 extra hero spec or just make the hero talents wider. Or maybe they could do something like this: Add new hero specs, add 5 talent points and 5 hero spec points in each new expansion until the worldsoul saga is over.

After the Worldsoul Saga they will definitely do a level squish and a revamp of the talent system.

Yeah these seem highly likely. I'd be very unsurprised if, post-Worldsoul saga, the revamp to talents and classes was pretty massive, and that, assuming a max level of 60, we might take a have like a "Hero Slot" at 20, 40, and 60 (or just 30 and 60) where we pick a super-talent named after one of the Hero Talent trees (we'd have presumably about six per spec at that point) that adds in some the "greatest hits" of that talent tree as a single thing. Or something entirely different, but still offering a way to bring back some of thematics and mechanics of the Hero Talents.

I don't think they can just delete them - too many people would get too annoyed. But equally they don't want to create a balancing nightmare so they can't really make them into subclasses or something.