Cata had the best talent system

Community General Discussion
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Prove me wrong

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Not gunna try, because I agree to a small extent. I really liked talents in Cata. They weren’t too cumbersome and allowed for some small variations to spice up game play.

I’m just surprised someone is calling anything in cata the best. Usually in the only one who likes cata.

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With the benefit of hindsight I did like Cata systems where you were still mostly a class, with talents used to flesh out your spec.

And you were still moderately guaranteed any given person woulnt be completely awful like being a warrior without speccing for MS/BT.

I wouldn’t mind combining them.

You have a base class.

The Cata style talents flush out your spec, along with several class specific passive and talents.

Then we can call the MoP style talents maybe “feats” and they are also applied.

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There’s no need to try to prove you wrong. You have the right to that opinion.

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RIP Frozen Power

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Wotlk had a bigger talent tree cataclysm just cut it down

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I think Cata talent system was a downgrade from WotLK talent tree.

Forcing to go down one tree and then picking another tree never made sense IMO.

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Can’t. Loved the talent trees and would like them brought back.

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I didn’t loathe it by any means but I mostly played shadow back then and I don’t really miss the orbs and especially not the “dark angel” wings. I may have serious issues with void form (hence why I’ve found other classes) but that was (graphically) dumb.

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All you did was copy/paste the same cookie cutter builds that everyone used. You went down the line and grabbed every major one pointer, with the paths to them being extremely inconsequential to gameplay and generally just uninteresting. Think ‘0.3 seconds off of frost bolt’ levels of boring.

At least now there are some hard choices to make that actually compel us to swap talents depending on the encounter or enemy arena comp.

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Bigger doesn’t always mean better.

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Meh, it’s still pretty cookie cutter, and always will be.

Just check Icy-Veins man, there’s a “best” spec for every class. Some are more situational then others, but that just means they’ll be picked less.

Before, at least you have the option to meme around with some talents.

Now? You are denied the choice to gimp yourself in the name of fun.

Also, getting something every 15 levels as opposed to a small talent every level kinda sucks. Your growth was small, but it was growth nonetheless, each level.

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It felt good to have a new point to invest with every level but the actual decision-making involved was a total non factor.

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for the most part, yeah

but the sheer amount of talents and mathcrafting, along with updated tier set bonuses and stats once in a while would make for some interesting and novel builds

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Not really. There might be a best talent for this fight and a different best talent for that one. This one’s good for raiding and this one for mythic plus. This one for arena and this one for battlegrounds.

You cite icy veins, good. Check out the number of talent rows that have multiple check marks or ‘?’s’. There are compelling choices to be made now that have tangible gameplay implications.

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situational spec swaps never hasn’t been the case though

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Right, I’m saying the choices now are teleport versus death coil (an actually tough call) instead of 0.3 second faster shadowbolts versus 9% more corruption damage for your SL/SL lock. Whoop dee doo. At the end of the day, you’re still an SL/SL lock just like every other lock.

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I never liked talent trees. It was basically just take mandatory traits that should be baked into the spec to begin with and very minor creativity. It would be like asking to goto a version of wow with no secondary stats.

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Cata talent tree felt weird at the time with talents every other level, but the real problem was that it locked you to a tree where you had to spend 31 talent points before going elsewhere. The intent was you’d go take your final talent of the tree, but as I was maining Ele at the time Earthquake was situational at best and flat out worthless otherwise. Since we had to put 31 points into the tree anyone who min/max’d and used Dual Spec had an EQ spec and a single target spec.

So no, I’d say TBC or WoTLK had it best. I don’t care that there’s a lot of fluff in the trees and that people will always find the best way to spec because regardless of whether we have 2 options or 9001 they will math it out. The nice thing about the fluffy talent trees is that it gives the non-hardcore a way to spec in more unique ways that they may prefer due to their playstyle/content that current talent trees don’t really allow and since Cata locked you to a tree until you spent 31 points in it that drops it out of the race for best talent system.

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Getting new spells every other level was also kind of nice, even if its just a rank increase. Theres huge gaps while leveling where you get absolutely nothing and when you do its a passive.

Balance druids don’t get their silence until level 80. And people wonder why nobody interrupts.