The talent trees are a total mess.

[Al Gorefiend]

Gawd, yes. All this "depth" talent shit is burdensome garbage. It requires either (a) each player does a PhD-level analysis, or (b) you wait until someone else does the PhD analysis and follow what they did.

Effectively, this means the "depth" is for 0.0001% of the player base, and everyone else just copies. If there's no one to do the PhD analysis for a particular spec, the spec is dead. If there is an analysis, but it is bad, the spec is dead.

I imagine it also makes it 10x more complex for developers to balance specs.

God yes thank you.

I was just in heroic Araz last night deciding Im just gonna go voidweaver disc because its just heroics. After a group wipe from orbs I got called out (2nd place healer) for not playing my class properly.

There is no actual choice. Regardless of whatever design they go with its "are you optimal or arent you"

[epigramx]

you one of those people who fall for the illusion of choice?

You're projecting. The best players don't copy paste Utility from a website.

Utility depends on your own raid team or your own pvp team.

- - - Updated - - -

I got called out (2nd place healer) for not playing my class properly.

its just heroics

no actual choice

That's a problem with your team. Find one that fits your casual playstyle.

Or any guild really that isn't too sweaty outside main raid hours.

- - - Updated - - -

talent shit is burdensome garbage. It requires either (a) each player does a PhD-level analysis

So your problem is that you don't want to think and you only want to copy-paste codes from a website or have Blizzard do it for you without even doing that.

That's not a problem with Utility or talents, it's you not wanting choice at all.

[Clash the DK]

My opinion was that the previous talent system was too simple and didn't offer enough choices. I also wanted to see some interconnectivity between talents similar to the original talent trees. Ironically, those two issues were addressed with the current talent trees. But as Blizzard tends to do - they took everything to the opposite extreme. Now we have this bloated system stuffed with talents offering these tiny damage increases or utility choices that will never be noticed if chosen. This is not the championed illusion of choice that people ascribe to the situation; It's just unnecessarily complicated.

I would have rather seen them take one of two different approaches:

A. Use the previous talent system but expand to improve - 6 rows of talents with 6 talent choices per row - 1 talent chosen every 5 levels. The result is about 15 talents chosen at level 80. That's plenty of options to give the feel of customizing your character without having an over-designed nexus of talents filled with underwhelming incremental talents.

B. Use the current talent system but cut it in half - 1 talent every 2 levels. If it worked for WoW in the beginning - when the game was at it's most popular - then I'm pretty sure it will work fine now... This rids the system of a big chunk of unneeded bloat - Having 1 talent per level was just a ridiculous idea. In this scenario, you still choose 35 talents at level 80. But because the game is ever expanding, I'm not even sure this solution is enough to keep the system in check long term. Also, the Hero talents are really dumb because there is no actual choice there; Some of that should be retained but combined into the core system.

[epigramx]

My opinion was that the previous talent system was too simple and didn't offer enough choices. I also wanted to see some interconnectivity between talents similar to the original talent trees. Ironically, those two issues were addressed with the current talent trees. But as Blizzard tends to do - they took everything to the opposite extreme. Now we have this bloated system stuffed with talents offering these tiny damage increases or utility choices that will never be noticed if chosen. This is not the championed illusion of choice that people ascribe to the situation; It's just unnecessarily complicated.

I would have rather seen them take one of two different approaches:

A. Use the previous talent system but expand to improve - 6 rows of talents with 6 talent choices per row - 1 talent chosen every 5 levels. The result is about 15 talents chosen at level 80. That's plenty of options to give the feel of customizing your character without having an over-designed nexus of talents filled with underwhelming incremental talents.

B. Use the current talent system but cut it in half - 1 talent every 2 levels. If it worked for WoW in the beginning - when the game was at it's most popular - then I'm pretty sure it will work fine now... This rids the system of a big chunk of unneeded bloat - Having 1 talent per level was just a ridiculous idea. In this scenario, you still choose 35 talents at level 80. But because the game is ever expanding, I'm not even sure this solution is enough to keep the system in check long term. Also, the Hero talents are really dumb because there is no actual choice there; Some of that should be retained but combined into the core system.

I believe people are right when they say the better version was MoP's; it was basically rows of talent choices of 1 out of 3 each; not a single one was 100% passive throughput so almost 100% of the talents could change according to the encounter or according to the current raid team or current 5man setup.

But I envision something much better than that; the rows of 3 each was restricted in itself in the sense that it was always 1 out of 3; also it was conflating pure defense with damaging utility like AOE vs Single Target.

An improvement would be like MOP's but more complex; have a separate pure-defenses system to a pure-utility like AOE vs Single Target system; I'm not sure how the 3-talent thing would improve though.

- - - Updated - - -

PS at the end of the day we might be seeing Devs' laziness or incompetence manifested here, because the best talent trees had to be also reflected in the encounters (ie having a reason to change them up according to the encounter) or according to the current raid team in relation to the encounter etc. Maybe they lack the skill nowadays to do that mix well (and no: "AI will fix it" is never an answer (because AI is dumb as shit compared to an actually good designer)).

[Clash the DK]

Take another look at what I outlined. The key to improving the MoP model is having 6 talents per row instead of 3 - with you selecting 2 of those 6 in each row. Each row would have a theme specialized for each class. For example, Death Knight might look something like this:

1 - General Defensive
2 - Single Target Damage
3 - CC / Movement
4 - Cleave / AoE Damage
5 - Self-Healing
6 - Big Offensive Cooldowns

[epigramx]

Take another look at what I outlined. The key to improving the MoP model is having 6 talents per row instead of 3 - with you selecting 2 of those 6 in each row. Each row would have a theme specialized for each class. For example, Death Knight might look something like this:

1 - General Defensive
2 - Single Target Damage
3 - CC / Movement
4 - Cleave / AoE Damage
5 - Self-Healing
6 - Big Offensive Cooldowns

It's not a horrible idea though you seem to enforce AOE and single target to be ALWAYS chosen (you only separate what kind of single target or AOE will be chosen).

It seems more interesting to give the choice to drop either of the two entirely because it has higher stakes and it impacts the actual output way more.

They way you have it is very prone to people copy-pasting in all bosses because they'd be saying "well I have the best AOE and ST talents!".

[Clash the DK]

It's not a horrible idea though you seem to enforce AOE and single target to be ALWAYS chosen (you only separate what kind of single target or AOE will be chosen).

It seems more interesting to give the choice to drop either of the two entirely because it has higher stakes and it impacts the actual output way more.

They way you have it is very prone to people copy-pasting in all bosses because they'd be saying "well I have the best AOE and ST talents!".

I believe that the throughput rows should offer a choice between active and passive talents. There are some players who prefer fewer buttons to push and there are others that prefer more. The only way to appease the largest amount of players is to offer choice.

No matter what talent system is used, there will always be the "right" choice for any particular situation. The theory-crafters will deem this so and most of the high-end players will abide by this information. However, there are more people playing that just that group. And the game needs to cater to everyone whenever possible.

[epigramx]

I believe that the throughput rows should offer a choice between active and passive talents. There are some players who prefer fewer buttons to push and there are others that prefer more. The only way to appease the largest amount of players is to offer choice.

No matter what talent system is used, there will always be the "right" choice for any particular situation. The theory-crafters will deem this so and most of the high-end players will abide by this information. However, there are more people playing that just that group. And the game needs to cater to everyone whenever possible.

I agree there could be a "beginner" choice of having a lot of passives (with lower top damage/healing/defense), though a huge problem with that is that any guild that is semi-decent (doesn't even have to be top 5,000 really) would pressure their members to never use passives anyway so it becomes cookie cutter.

If the game becomes too complex for beginners in that way they'd be better off simplifying it at that level and making it complex at the boss difficulty level.

[Ghostile]

I agree there could be a "beginner" choice of having a lot of passives (with lower top damage/healing/defense), though a huge problem with that is that any guild that is semi-decent (doesn't even have to be top 5,000 really) would pressure their members to never use passives anyway so it becomes cookie cutter.

Nobody would give a shit whether you pick actives or passives unless it absolutely gimps your damage.
Source: Raiding in world 1000~ and we barely care what spec we play.

[epigramx]

unless it absolutely gimps your damage.

That's what it would do. Historically any passive in place of an active was usually a damage reduction (unless it was defensive) and it makes sense because it was fair (to get lower numbers because you tried less).

Also "absolutely gimps" is subjective; if a guild wipes at the 1% of a boss for 10 times then "low impact" becomes extreme impact in talents; if everyone got 2% extra from talents they'd down the boss earlier.

[Ghostile]

That's what it would do. Historically any passive in place of an active was usually a damage reduction (unless it was defensive) and it makes sense because it was fair (to get lower numbers because you tried less).

Also "absolutely gimps" is subjective; if a guild wipes at the 1% of a boss for 10 times then "low impact" becomes extreme impact in talents; if everyone got 2% extra from talents they'd down the boss earlier.

And yet in reality we dont really care about that outside Hall of fame.

[klaps_05]

Nothing worse than taking talents which make zero difference to gameplay.

Lets take a look at Fire Mage midnight talents:
skipping talents that grant abilities - i will preface that getting an ability is great, but also the ability-giving talents feel like complete filler and should simply be baseline

the talents are in 3 categories:

1: pointless output talent you take based on tuning which you dont pay attention to as every sim will tell you there is no gain in gaming that talent
Ignition, Fervent flickering, Flame on, Critical mass, Deep impact, Scald, Controlled destruction, Mote of flame, Blast zone, Conflagration, Intensifying flame, Spontenous combust, Molten fury, inflame , fired up, wildfire, fevered incantation, fire's ire, fired up, master of flame, from the ashes, flame acelerant, pyromaniac, fired up, burnout, feel the burn, slow burn, burn it oall - count: 28

2: gimmick talent relevant once every 3 expansions for 1 boss
Firestarter - count: 1

3: good, gameplay changing talents
fuel the fire, Kindling, Heat shimmer, fiery rush, pyroclasm, cinderstorm - count: 6

The point of the 1st category is that you can DELETE all those talents, buff mage overall dmg and you will not be able to tell the difference. i would rather have to choose from the 6 goo gameplay changing talents and make meaningful choices there, than click on 20somth pointless nodes.

and whats worse is now even more output talents are being put in the CLASS tree of all places...the tree that was supposed to be for class utility variety.

[Flaks]

Nothing worse than taking talents which make zero difference to gameplay.

Lets take a look at Fire Mage midnight talents:
skipping talents that grant abilities - i will preface that getting an ability is great, but also the ability-giving talents feel like complete filler and should simply be baseline

the talents are in 3 categories:

1: pointless output talent you take based on tuning which you dont pay attention to as every sim will tell you there is no gain in gaming that talent
Ignition, Fervent flickering, Flame on, Critical mass, Deep impact, Scald, Controlled destruction, Mote of flame, Blast zone, Conflagration, Intensifying flame, Spontenous combust, Molten fury, inflame , fired up, wildfire, fevered incantation, fire's ire, fired up, master of flame, from the ashes, flame acelerant, pyromaniac, fired up, burnout, feel the burn, slow burn, burn it oall - count: 28

2: gimmick talent relevant once every 3 expansions for 1 boss
Firestarter - count: 1

3: good, gameplay changing talents
fuel the fire, Kindling, Heat shimmer, fiery rush, pyroclasm, cinderstorm - count: 6

The point of the 1st category is that you can DELETE all those talents, buff mage overall dmg and you will not be able to tell the difference. i would rather have to choose from the 6 goo gameplay changing talents and make meaningful choices there, than click on 20somth pointless nodes.

and whats worse is now even more output talents are being put in the CLASS tree of all places...the tree that was supposed to be for class utility variety.

Yea it really feels like a completely different team took over class design for this expansion. It's the reason that feedback has gone more ignored than it had in 4 years.

The DF talent revamp for me was incredible from the get go and then them building on it was even better. None of the classes I played then (devoker, frost mage, arms warrior, retribution paladin) felt like they had more than 30% of their talents be useless throughput talents and it felt like my choices mattered. TWW sucked that away with hero talents pigeon holing you into ever more specific talent builds and now they've went and gutted the main talent trees to accommodate expanding the hero talents and these useless "apex" talents.