Gee, I remember when covenants were supposed to be a breakthrough that would be perfectly balanced, and would contribute to gameplay and the community because no one would ever be rejected from a group again because of choices they made in their build.
But I’m sure you’re right. They never make any changes that disappoint players or are somehow less than what was originally suggested.
Hint: the idea that the previous presentation of talents was holding devs back and preventing them from making changes they wanted to make is silly. They always had that ability.
This sort of solves the issue where talents are limited to the row they’re in, but it certainly creates another problem in which you described.
I think a tree would be a lot more meaningful if it had a better mix of abilities and then modifiers. Conduits are a good example actually of what they could do with modifying abilities, they just need a few modifiers for the impactful abilities and they need to not be tied to ilvls or looting them like conduits were.
Example: You talent into Glacial Spike.
Modifier 1: Upon impact Glacial Spike explodes dealing X% spell power to all targets within 8 yards of your target.
Modifier 2: Upon impact Glacial Spike freezes all enemies within 8 yards of your target in place for 3 seconds.
Modifier 3: You’re able to cast Glacial Spike while moving.
Modifier 4: Brain Freeze now applies to Gacial Spike as well.
etc. etc. etc. I don’t even play frost mage and can come up with a few.
They can also bake in glyphs into a tab of the interface for class flavor. There is a guy on reddit who’s created now at least a couple hundred glyph concepts for Blizzard.
Blizzard may also pull borrowed power for talents as far back as Legion and up to SL. I recognize a few of the nodes as being azerite traits and legendary effects. Classes may get one or more than one thematically appropriate covenant ability. DKs have Abomination Limb and potentially the Swarming Mist spell effect for the 9th row class talent: Blood Draw.
The builds I’ve made, Druid and DK, with the talent calculator have been varied with base functionality and stats that weren’t possible before. I can’t wait to make more builds with more trees that will not require an endgame grind!
My only concern is stuff like currently where as a frost dk I can spec out of all CC abilities to get more dps (I do keep the kick).
My single target boss damage and cleave go way up my utility goes down
5 points in unholy nets
4% Strength (no brainer)
Oblit cleave in dnd (useful)
6% increased damage to targets hit by frost fever (for 5 seconds)
5% haste in dnd (good if your dropping just 4 points)
I personally maxed unholy and frost trees to get soul reaper for extra damage in execution phase.