For me, looking back at the old talent system, I loved getting a new point every level and choosing a talent that would increase my strength or add a passive to my spells or even getting new spells entirely and building to those things as I added more talents down the tree to get something new. And when you reached the end you could choose to go into another spec and get some bonus power from them. I think it just gave you more choice and power added to your character that you could see and control.
I liked the original better, especially for leveling. As far as choice goes for endgame content there really wasn’t anymore choice than there is now, but outside of that is where you could get a bit more creative.
Seems like it was TBC where Rogue had 5-6 hybrid specs that were fun for a whole host of things, even if combat was mostly run in raids.
The old one felt better. Even if we all picked the same spec sometimes the illusion of choice is better than no choice. But we know better than that. Even though cookie cutter builds existed there were so many different options and builds for different modes of game play. Now we have a single target spec, a mythic plus spec and a pvp spec with little to no variation
I do not want to lose my current talents in exchange for going back to the old talent trees, especially after having my memory refreshed and my rose colored glasses of nostalgia burst into flames by playing Classic.
If we can have both, that’s fine. Everyone is happy.
The incremental carrot rewards for the old system was its only positive point. Once you reached cap builds devolved into the same 2-4 build possibilities we have had since mop. However everyone can profess that they opted into choosing a “generic” bis talent build to make gearing and playstyle consistent amongst different forms of content. Especially so for alts.
Personally I preferred the former although I can understand that having “trap” talents and cookie cutter builds can be a potential negative to the system. (Because most people would run similar builds except for those who didn’t know better and would essentially gimp themselves unknowingly).
Probably one of the better parts of the system at least in my opinion was simply the weapon specializations and being able to say “I want my character to be better with swords” for example.
I wouldn’t mind having a system similar to the old one reintroduced, but I imagine there would be a lot of underlying work to be done to get something like that running, and in a balanced manner, in the current game.
Perhaps the talent tree would be more linear in it’s spec progression but have more freedom of choice between specs with your remaining points (similar to Cata talent system).
Or perhaps it would simply be a case where you eventually unlock all talent points, but it was more level orientated in the fact that you simply had agency over which order you unlocked them on your way to max level?
Your last point was the situation we had with artifacts before (or maybe a bit into) 7.1. 2 or 3 different paths and even an option to unlearn traits if you had picked wrong.
The old system had a ton of filler. That being said, every level gave you at least something, and felt impactful in at least some way. You gained a little more strength with every level, and RP-wise is incredible.
The new talents are basically all keystone abilities. So, that final talent you got under the old tree, well the entire talent tree are basically those abilities. This being said, half of the abilities either don’t apply to what you’re doing in any given moment or are passive anyways and don’t have a “feel” to them. There’s also the issue with you only getting a new talent every 10-15 levels (which ever it is), which doesn’t make sense RP-wise and doesn’t feel good for the player who goes through extended droughts with nothing new. This issue is made worse with level scaling mobs, which make you feel weaker level over level.
If I had to pick one, I’d pick the old tree over the new. The new tree probably made great sense on paper, but in practice it’s basically a great detriment.
If I could have my way, the players would actually have both talent trees at the same time. The current system would be your keystone abilities that you get every 5, 10 or 15 levels and the old system would be talents you get every level that buff smaller aspects of your gameplay.
Old talent system was absolutely terrible. stuff like “get 0.2% crit on X ability” was ridiculously boring and by the time we got to max level we all chose the fun talents anyway. Yeah sure, some people made hybrids but they were never as functional and were more just troll stuff.
There’s no reason why we simply can’t have a second talent tree. One for keystone abilities (the current system) and one for level to level minor improvements (the old system.
I’d rather have the new one, the old one was good back then because leveling is relevant, people would share leveling build because not everyone has infinite mana regen and lifesteal/absorb ability.
Currently you can level to 120 playing with just 1 of your toe so the old talent tree is kind of irrelevant and losing the new one for it would be terrible.
The problem with that is re-inventing the wheel every 2 years we lose so much in doing so.
I am all for keeping thing “spicy” but we know Blizzard will F it up like always then spend the next few years fixing what should never have been touch to begin with.
Cookie cutter builds will always exist no matter what. There’s always a best way of doing damage. Thats why we use icyviens, bloodmallet and similar things. The argument against the old way that its cookie cutter always bothered me because of that.