What is the future of Hero Talents?

[NineSpine]

Well it's impossible that anything they do on Gw2 causes button bloat. Your first 5 abilities are determined by your weapons, then you have one heal ability, 3 regular abilities and one elite ability. It doesn't matter if you get to choose each of those from a pool of 30 abilities, you will always end up having only 10 abilities in your bars with the exact same structure i just mentioned and the traits don't add buttons since they are all passive. And that pool of abilities? they aren't perfectly balanced either, there is a reason why every power build for guardian has sword of justice and every condition build has purging flames.

Meta builds exist, as with any other game. You have freedom to be inefficient, you can run around with power gear, condition weapons, support abilities and a mix of traits if you want, but at the end of the day there are ideal choices depending on the type of content, type of damage, role... etc. Gw2 simply has less safety barriers mostly because a lot of the choices have less impact in terms of performance.

My point being that having more choices often means having more wrong choices. Devs want a controlled environment and balance is just a way to direct players towards how they intend the specs to be played, so talent systems are often more about giving the player an illusion of choice rather than actually enabling a diverse and unique playstyle depending on your choices, that's just PR talk.

People who are going to min max are always going to min max. That's not a reason to throttle the fun of people who don't min max.

[Holdodlig]

I expect Hero Talents to simply go deeper. Adding only a couple more throughput options per build will keep build diversity manageable for balancing. Adding the option to pick a second Hero Talent tree balloons complexity immediately. Also now that they have added two options per spec with the dual spec hero talents they could e.g. add some hero talents that are completely spec specific.

It's either this or they'll go the opposite way by making each talent tree work for each spec.

Also, there are files for a Warlord spec which were probably the first concept of Colossus. Maybe we'll simply get this during a patch for warriors just like shaman could have something that allow them to tank ?

[Schizoide]

Hero talents are intended to be evergreen so they won’t get bigger, meaning more talents per tree. Blizzard learned that lesson in cataclysm.

Instead they’ll add entirely new hero talent trees in each expansion to allow more choices without button and balancing bloat.

[Just Passing through]

Honestly no idea.

"Something" new and / or different? Maybe a third build? I mean, talents are constantly being worked on, what once were signature covenenat talents became part of the talent trees. Now we have hero talents (which so far I like) - but whatever will be next ist anyone's guess

[Lahis]

Hero talents are intended to be evergreen so they won’t get bigger, meaning more talents per tree. Blizzard learned that lesson in cataclysm.

Instead they’ll add entirely new hero talent trees in each expansion to allow more choices without button and balancing bloat.

Doesn't work unless they stop giving us talent points. Whole reason of Hero Talents were to give us 10 more talents points without bloating the spec and class trees, or turn them into non-choices by having enough points to pick everything at once if they just added more talent points without expanding the trees.

[Futhark]

I'm hoping new Hero Talents are double-downs of existing spec trees. So instead of Fire/Frost or Arcane/Frost, you get something like Arcane/Arcane(Archemage) or Fire/Fire(Firelord) or Frost/Frost (Lich).

[Kyux]

I would like to see (in order of priority):

a) more distinct/radical visuals

b) more options of hero specs

c) more choice nodes (even if simple)

[Schizoide]

Doesn't work unless they stop giving us talent points. Whole reason of Hero Talents were to give us 10 more talents points without bloating the spec and class trees, or turn them into non-choices by having enough points to pick everything at once if they just added more talent points without expanding the trees.

They found ways to reward players every level in previous expansions without adding talents to avoid bloat, I have supreme confidence that will continue.

[Wylyth1992]

I wish Hero Talents were more "lore neutral" in terms of gameplay. For example, Survival Hunter has access to Pack Leader (shared with BM) and Sentinel (shared with MM). While the former is pretty lore neutral, the latter really only fits with Night Elves (and Worgen if you roleplay your Worgen "going native"). This is a problem if you prefer the gameplay of Sentinel but the flavor (like summoning Owls) doesn't fit your chosen race.

[Schizoide]

That’s a fair criticism, they could add different race-appropriate summons to replace the owls with, I suspect, very little work. Or just add a bunch of glyphs to do the same thing.

[luciano]

Another variable to consider here would be HOW MANY hero points get tacked on each expansion.

While it might seem daunting to imagine them adding another 20 points per hero to cover the rest of the trilogy, you halve that by only adding 5 hero points per.

Five hero points could easily be four passives and one cool new spell per hero tree. Repeat that same thing for the third of this trilogy.

[Swnem]

No, i don't think the idea is to add more talents to the hero trees. I think the idea would be to add more hero specs. That way you got choice and not bloat.

[Kyux]

Another variable to consider here would be HOW MANY hero points get tacked on each expansion.

While it might seem daunting to imagine them adding another 20 points per hero to cover the rest of the trilogy, you halve that by only adding 5 hero points per.

Five hero points could easily be four passives and one cool new spell per hero tree. Repeat that same thing for the third of this trilogy.

Agreed - I don't think we want them adding 20 points worth of talents. It'd cause visual and choice bloat. But getting a point to spend each level is fun and I believe that was part of the talent redesign in DF. A middle ground would be adding 1 point per level (10 levels per expac) and 10 new talents. But, say, one talent could be +5%/10%/15% and require 3 points to max out. Is it boring? Yes. Does it give you something to do each level? Yes. Does it prevent UI bloat? Yes. The trees would stay small-ish but there's still power progression.

Idk, it's an option. Far from perfect.

[Schizoide]

They will absolutely add more hero trees in future expansions. Existing trees will not get additional points.

Feel free to bookmark so you can point and laugh when I turn out to be wrong, but if so they’re making a mistake.

[Kyux]

They will absolutely add more hero trees in future expansions. Existing trees will not get additional points.

Feel free to bookmark so you can point and laugh when I turn out to be wrong, but if so they’re making a mistake.

Why do you think that? Not saying you're wrong, but what do you see as the massive advantage of new hero specs over expanding current hero specs?

[KOUNTERPARTS]

I have loved the implementation of Hero Talents so far. Yes... there is much more to do and iterate on.

But I like what seemingly is Blizzard's vision for them. I do hope they add more and new Hero Talent trees the classes going forward, and I hope they expand on the current ones; maybe another 2 tiers per tree.

One of the more stand-out choices (in my opinion) are Diabolist. The visual of summoning some demons that Warlocks have traditionally never had access to, and summon them quite often, is an exciting visual. There is not much depth or change done to the Destruction and Demonology specializations when choosing Diabolist and maybe that's one of its negatives.

[Lahis]

They found ways to reward players every level in previous expansions without adding talents to avoid bloat, I have supreme confidence that will continue.

Nah, they ditched MoP talents so they could come back into giving talent point each level.

[ro9ue]

Warlock, DK, Hunter, Shaman - All hero specs seem pretty solid thematically and mechanically. They should just make smaller tweaks to these. Personally I'd kill Soul Harvester for Warlock and make it Necromancer and if you pick it, it themes everything undead see my old post here on that.

Paladin, Warrior, Druid, Mage - All of these have a decent foundation. They don't need a ton of work, but some questionable choices like no Blademaster for Warrior, and why Herald of the Sun isn't more golden-light/fire themed for Tauren Sunwalkers and Golden Zandalari Paladins I don't know.

Monk, DH - Feels weak but maybe they can salvage them. For me Monk is too narrow thematically as it is - just Pandaria stuff. If they open it up to more generic themes like what does an elemental monk look like, or a light/shadow balance monk? Those could be interesting concepts to adapt the class better to non-Pandaren. DH is just like... a buff to what you have, and nothing is all that flashy so why bother? Needs something more interesting.

Rogue - They straight up need to go back to the drawing board on these.

Can't comment on Priest or Evoker since I barely play them.

[FossilFree]

Warlock, DK, Hunter, Shaman - All hero specs seem pretty solid thematically and mechanically. They should just make smaller tweaks to these. Personally I'd kill Soul Harvester for Warlock and make it Necromancer and if you pick it, it themes everything undead

All? I think you are forgetting Pack Leader, objectively the worst of all the hero talents. No new animations AT ALL and mechanics that don't change anything in a unique way. It just feels like more regular BM talents. Might as well have nothing and it would feel the same way. Certainly not heroic at all!

[Al Gorefiend]

The hero class trees are easier to balance around so I think we will get more options per point in it. Eventually we will run down to the usual +5% mastery talents in some places.

Or they make trees fatter instead of longer on the class/spec side and we get nodes that branch off of early/mid game talents into new choices that expand down, but then they must balance each class around potentially using their new points to get every choice in the final row and ignoring the new ones.

Definitely interesting to see how they handle it.