I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of the old talents coming back.

[Nymrohd]

Depends. If Blizzard incentivizes interrupts? They started doing that with the Night Fae soulbind, where if you interrupt, you get a buff.

I also don't pug high keys because I actually want a better chance at finishing them on time, if not two to three chesting them, so it didn't dawn on me that'd be an issue.

Interrupts have been incentivized well before the Night Fae. I can at least remember it as early as Cataclysm with glyphs giving you resource on a successful interrupt for multiple classes.

Also, interrupts will be in the class tree. You are not going to be sacrificing throughput for them.

[kaminaris]

The problems in the end lie in the whole expansion wide systems that look nice on paper and sounded awesome in Legion only to realize your character was good because of such systems and once removed it sucked ass to play. That's why the new talent trees replacing these systems are a good thing. Your class will feel good because it's your class and not because some random thing fell from the sky and you're suddendly more powerful.

Yep

Then it's all about the actua stuff that's going onto the trees. They mentioned giving an interrupt to everyone through talents - which is a good thing. Stuff like raid buffs can also be talents: you want to get them if no one is providing cause it's going to be a bigger raid dps increase than not having them and would solve the issue that at the moment you need specific classes to cover for many of them.

They should have made separate tree for utility and raw output so you will never be picking between more damage and some utility. If they do that it will mean they already forgotten lesson from legion. Raid wide dps buff vs personal CD is going to be the same shit decision.

[Nymrohd]

They should have made separate tree for utility and raw output so you will never be picking between more damage and some utility. If they do that it will mean they already forgotten lesson from legion. Raid wide dps buff vs personal CD is going to be the same shit decision.

But, they did? The class tree has utility, the spec tree has throughput.

[Dioporco]

They should have made separate tree for utility and raw output so you will never be picking between more damage and some utility. If they do that it will mean they already forgotten lesson from legion. Raid wide dps buff vs personal CD is going to be the same shit decision.

Literally how they presented the trees on the reveal video.

[Aydinx2]

Who really ?

I dont know who miss the old talent system, but i dont know anyone who miss +5% crit for 5 talent points kind of empty talents.

I don't miss the crit talents. I miss going up a level and being able to spend a point into a clear character improvement every time that isn't reliant on gear. Even something as simple as +1% crit.

The current system feels bad for leveling because your spec just feels unfinished the entire time. At least with this new node system they can add in more passives that increase your power while leveling so they can give you actives earlier on.

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But, they did? The class tree has utility, the spec tree has throughput.

There's still going to be utility in the spec tree and output in the class tree based on what we've seen so far. But I agree they should make the class "finished" in the class tree and add in any direct performance in the spec tree (like cheaper dispells should be in the Holy Priest tree).

[Nymrohd]

There's still going to be utility in the spec tree and output in the class tree based on what we've seen so far. But I agree they should make the class "finished" in the class tree and add in any direct performance in the spec tree (like cheaper dispells should be in the Holy Priest tree).

If the output in the class tree is limited, it's effectively a few points that will be locked for all raid and M+ builds. So it really comes to implementation. After all whether you pick the interrupt or not comes to the opportunity cost of your 25th class point.

[kaminaris]

Literally how they presented the trees on the reveal video.

They presented v0.0.1 alpha, you can only hope it stays that way, (in the way you interpret it) and there won't be "feel terrible to chose" decisions.

[Dioporco]

They presented v0.0.1 alpha, you can only hope it stays that way, (in the way you interpret it) and there won't be "feel terrible to chose" decisions.

Isnt the way I interpreted, in one of the various interview they stated is utility+power


feel terrible to chose are necessary for an rpg you have to value between 2 good traits, just like now

[Geckoo]

It doesn't matter what kind of system they use, it will always be about having some sort of illusion of choice where some players are free to run the wrong build while most players just run the most optimal thing determined by theorycrafting and written down in any guide. So with that in mind i would say that it is more fun to have a tree than it is to have the current system, specially if there is enough freedom to toy around with it.

[Nymrohd]

Isnt the way I interpreted, in one of the various interview they stated is utility+power


feel terrible to chose are necessary for an rpg you have to value between 2 good traits, just like now

RPGs are all about building characters and building characters is about making choices and thus accepting opportunity costs. The very moment you pick a race and a class you make a choice. And we are finally given talent loadouts, seemingly without limitation when as an MMORPG features I've often seen this as something you either pay increasing gold costs to unlock (or even real money as in the case of ESO.)

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It doesn't matter what kind of system they use, it will always be about having some sort of illusion of choice where some players are free to run the wrong build while most players just run the most optimal thing determined by theorycrafting and written down in any guide. So with that in mind i would say that it is more fun to have a tree than it is to have the current system, specially if there is enough freedom to toy around with it.

If they do a good job I can see people having a very large number of talent builds for the same spec. People already have addons that prompt you to switch builds based on dungeon & affix, raid encounter, BG or Arena etc. I just expect that to become much more prominent

[Velerios]

There will be guides that have talent trees for you to copy if you dont want to figure it out yourself.

Then there's actually even less choice than we have now, making it useless.

Personally i'm mixed about it: if they would make both available: having slots every 10 level for 1 active talent to choose as we have now AND talent points every level, then it's good, but if it's like pre cata, it's bad. I really want to see the first talent tree preview to build it myself. Wowdb/wowhead will for sure have an interactive one available to try it out.

[Coldkil]

They should have made separate tree for utility and raw output so you will never be picking between more damage and some utility. If they do that it will mean they already forgotten lesson from legion. Raid wide dps buff vs personal CD is going to be the same shit decision.

I don't know if i got it right form the interviews, but most of the talents are not going to be raw output and more utility oriented, especially the class wide tree. Spec tree should have more power talent given how each spec has different abilities etc so it makes sense.

As you said, it's a matter of putting the choices in the right place. ideally, a "socket/player chosen" talent should have similar options like different cooldowns or active abilities, or even the choice between an active and a passive given relative equivalent power (the passive one should be slightly less powerful to compensate for easiness of use).
Things like interrupts or raid buffs should be basically the horizontal branching of the tree. Blizzard said that at 70 we should have around 2/3 of the tree filled up - to me it means that we should have all the necessary/mandatory stuff covered up and we have some leeway in the additional utilities the new system will open up to classes. So your build also changes based on your raid comp/fight if there's something specific needed or you have to cover up for something.

I am not against sacrificing a personal CD for a raid buff - the latter is just worth more anyway - but i can see that it could pose a problem for players. It's just that the parse culture is something i don't really like, i usually use the logs to check where i can improve, but cannot care less about a ladder wher top spots are basically taken by people who pad, stack CDs on themselves and often take risks/ignore mechanics because of bigger numbers that are not really needed.

I'm more satsfied when my raid is all parsing blue/purple compared to have myself parsing orange and the rest green/grey (which is still enough to beat fights actually, modern encounters are way more about execution than raw dps excluding the obvious dps checks boss).

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Then there's actually even less choice than we have now, making it useless.

The choice is there now and will be there in 10.0. The problem now is that the talents have been neglected for so much time in favor of artifacts/azerite/covenants.

Not a game problem if people is just focused on "BEST SPEC META" and couldn't care less about any of the game systems. No matter the way you implement it, this kind of players won't partake in anything, they just consume the content.

[Nymrohd]

The choice is there now and will be there in 10.0. The problem now is that the talents have been neglected for so much time in favor of artifacts/azerite/covenants.

Not a game problem if people is just focused on "BEST SPEC META" and couldn't care less about any of the game systems. No matter the way you implement it, this kind of players won't partake in anything, they just consume the content.

Two things. First, this talent system has the potential to make the best spec meta a lot more complex to compute. Second, the design intent seems clear in that it's meant to support not having a single build for everything. And to be fair, many specs did have build variation depending on task. I'm a tankadin and I change talents in some rows all the time. And a lot of things come down to personal choice and even group composition.

I do hope they reconsider spells and talents that work like PI though. They cause friction in guilds and they completely distort leaderboards. And for many players who spend a long time in farm trying to get a good score is really the only competition that exists in the game after a while; since Blizzard can only really manage 1 raid of 10-12 bosses every 6-8 months, they should facilitate the ways people have found to keep themselves entertained or offer better alternatives (still think there should be official speedrunning leaderboards for Heroic and Mythic raids).

[Coldkil]

Two things. First, this talent system has the potential to make the best spec meta a lot more complex to compute. Second, the design intent seems clear in that it's meant to support not having a single build for everything. And to be fair, many specs did have build variation depending on task. I'm a tankadin and I change talents in some rows all the time. And a lot of things come down to personal choice and even group composition.

Oh, i fully agree. But i know already that theorycrafters have way much more powerful tools than in the past, and how many players believe the true game is "DOING BEST DPS" so i assume most will flock to icyvein's or similiar websites recommended builds and just copy them.

Point is just that meta and cookie-cutter builds aren't going away, so adding actual choices to people who want to delve in the system instead of just checking someone else and do the same is just a good thing to have.

And if as you say talents become situational depending on fight and raid comp, even better.

[Nymrohd]

Oh, i fully agree. But i know already that theorycrafters have way much more powerful tools than in the past, and how many players believe the true game is "DOING BEST DPS" so i assume most will flock to icyvein's or similiar websites recommended builds and just copy them.

Point is just that meta and cookie-cutter builds aren't going away, so adding actual choices to people who want to delve in the system instead of just checking someone else and do the same is just a good thing to have.

And if as you say talents become situational depending on fight and raid comp, even better.

I think to some extent talents already are situational. Some specs have a significant enough delta between ST build and AoE built that they will switch around for Tyrannical, they'll switch for bosses with heavy add waves. There can be some very interesting trade offs as well; I remember as destro in MoP being able to trade some dps for mobility and for anyone but the best players the trade off was almost always worth it. As a tankadin I'll constantly switch depending on which defensive is best (Spellwarding very much forces you to do that all the time). If you go to Icyveins or even WoWHead as you said you'll find that there is a talent break up boss by boss for each raid and for many specs you'll see two or even three different builds being used in the same raid. The goal is to change it from "many" to "all"

In an ideal world one spec would be able to offer multiple playstyles that are nearly optimal (not just viable) for multiple types of content. This is not an ideal world though. And WoW is a game that is soon to have THIRTY EIGHT specs. Given the variety in gameplay offered, I absolutely understand why Blizzard focuses on balancing over a single optimal path.

[PenguinChan]

To me, it looks like they're adding multiple choices in the same slot with the little arrows - while the rest of the tree is going to be both generic stat increases (I don't mind these) and more mild to moderate gameplay alterations. IE: 5% chance to do something, decrease CD and damage by 50%, etc.

That is to say, while it may not be amazing it's better than what we have from an RPG standpoint. Even if there will be cookie cutter builds (There always is, even now and forever more).

[Berkilak]

Depends on, really, its not like the game has perfect class balancing and I always seen outliers and the game is pretty restrictive in terms of group compositions, if you play content which needs any level of organisation which is pretty scarce, so no idea where the breadth of content that FFXIV has comes from. I play both and the one thing I'm always overwhelmed with is how much content you can do in World of Warcraft, its insane, FFXIV doesn't even come close. And to be honest, class diversity is also kind of bigger in WoW, classes tend to play much more distinctly from each other in terms of their gameplay loop than in FF14, especially the healers and tanks.

In WoW, you have one content stream: playing the patch. Everything else is just the leftover mess that the developers cease to care about the moment that the next patch hits. You will never be able to experience Ulduar, or the Isle of Thunder, or any other content in the game how it was intended to be experienced unless you play it while it's current. WoW creates an ongoing microcosm of itself to be treated as "legitimate" content.

But again, if you choose to view FFXIV through the lens of a WoW player, in that only current patch dungeon and raid tier are "legitimate" content, then of course WoW wins. WoW does WoW best. It always has, and it always will. And nothing will change a typical WoW player's mind that content outside of the endgame loot treadmill can be considered "legitimate." And who can blame them? The developers think the same. When they suggested that certain new features would cost a raid tier with the implication being that no one would be crazy enough to pay that price... games like FFXIV and ESO gladly make that sacrifice all the time to broaden the scope of their games beyond simply an endless cycle of raid tiers replacing raid tiers.

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I mean I can see your perspective here, but . . . people bought wow and invested vast swaths of their lives in it because they like what it is. It's not unreasonable for them to ask that the devs maintain what they so heavily invested themselves in. Maybe if players want things that other games focus on they really should just play those other games. It's like me buying madden and insisting that there be dragons added and calling the developers lazy for not giving me a sword.
I say this as someone who hasn't spent more than 20 hours raiding in any expansion since Cata, btw, so I have no dog in this race.

I suppose there are still a lot of holdouts around these parts that bought into WoW before the developers themselves really knew where the game was headed. There was endless potential before they discovered and settled on a formula. I still believe in that potential, two decades later. Naïve as that may be.

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Yes this is exactly what I've seen. You have players, which has times has included me, who can play some tricky spec, but the amount of effort and focus and awake-ness required means you're drained and if you're playing after a day of work and stuff, it's particularly bad. And exactly, the next thing is, that guy doesn't log on one day, and everyone is wondering where he's gone, and either he doesn't come back, or he comes back but he's not playing that character any more, he's done with that, now he's playing something else. Which, non-coincidentally, is always something reasonably easy/pleasant to play.

Re: refreshed, absolutely, and it was Cataclysm that destroyed that for me. I was able to get it back in Legion with a couple of characters/specs, but BfA and SL sort of chipped away at it. Whereas with FFXIV, I get that with several classes - not all of them - the only healer that works for me in that game is White Mage for example, but they work great.

Back in Legion, we had our best DPS quit out of the blue. He didn't reign back his playtime or whatever - he simply quit, cold turkey. The mental demand drained him. It wasn't sustainable. But he was the type that, if he couldn't be the best, the game wasn't worth playing.

[glowpipe]

Just like now, you can go to whatever website dealing with wow and choose the pre-determined best talents for whatever you are doing and just copy pasting it. This is a non issue.

However for people who don't like to watch guides etc. The new(old) talent system is a godsend(at least on paper, its blizzard, they might fuck it up) as people can experiment and customize the char themselves

[VinceVega]

It Talent points. You can even share them.

So the moment the expansion drops you can go to wagio and import every single needed skill and you would never have to think about it.

Because this is such a complicated system *sigh*

Seriously where you guys coming from? There is the one guy who thinks heroic dungeons and LFR is to difficult and wants ALL instance content be as difficult as MC in classic and now you who think a system where you click and get something along a path is to complex.
Go play a mobile game because even FF14 and BDO would be to diffult for you to understand.

[Royru]

It Talent points. You can even share them.

So the moment the expansion drops you can go to wagio and import every single needed skill and you would never have to think about it.

Because this is such a complicated system *sigh*

Seriously where you guys coming from? There is the one guy who thinks heroic dungeons and LFR is to difficult and wants ALL instance content be as difficult as MC in classic and now you who think a system where you click and get something along a path is to complex.
Go play a mobile game because even FF14 and BDO would be to diffult for you to understand.

Why are you acting like you know how the talents will work when we haven’t even seen them? Also I would like for you to look at the last 7 years and tell me with a straight face that those talents are complicated and they aren’t insanely copied as well.

At least with talents there is SOME form of flavor