Curious if, and why, people take passive talents.
I do under one condition; my first 12 buttons are all heavily used abilities. My 12 Ctrl+ buttons are all lesser used, defensive or movement abilities. My 12 Alt+ buttons are things like mounts, pets, social macros, potions, etc.
If I have 13 or more heavily used abilities, sometimes I’ll move one to a Ctrl+ key, but mostly I’ll favor a passive talent. If I have 11 or less, I’ll favor another button to add. For me it’s not so much about ease of rotation, but ease of quick button presses on those 12 unaltered.
On some classes this is pretty easy to accomplish. On others, it’s as many passives as I can get away with.
Which do you favor?
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I’ll take a big cool flashy ability over a passive, but if its just a generic thing that I press every 10 seconds or w/e and only adds more button bloat, then I’d prefer the passive.
Most specs have 2 or 3 regularly used buttons more than I’d prefer in DF.
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The passive talents like the one that gets rid of crusader strike are my favorite, I dont like spamming builders if i dont have to
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I wouldn’t say the fact that they’re a passive or active affects my decision, it depends on how the talent impacts the playstyle.
For example, I love Hunter’s Lone Wolf, but I hate Demon Hunter’s Demon Blades. I like not needing to worry about my pet getting stuck in the corner, but I don’t like missing a filler button that I can spam.
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It’s a pretty broad question.
I hate Haunt and I hate Siphon Life. Those are actives. I choose Perma Corruption over Siphon Life every time regardless of performance. Why? Those 2 actives don’t add anything. They’re just piling on.
But I love Havoc and will always pick it over the passive variant that has a chance to apply Havoc.
I guess Passive vs Active just isn’t a big deal to me.
I can see most people favoring Actives, but I think the intricacies of a spec are defined by their passives so I suppose if I had to choose a well designed passive verse active, I would opt for the passive.
I mostly prefer passive abilities because I already have enough to pop something every GCD.
The exceptions are talents that do something cool to or with an ability I already use in steady rotation. I’m always up for some new goodness for my Captain America schtick.
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Mostly I’m just lazy.
It’s the same kind of reasoning why i prefer proc trinkets over on-use ones, i tend to always forget about the on-use ones and don’t really benefit much from them in my normal day to day life.
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I was playing SWTOR a lot before Dragonflight released, so I was used to having more buttons to press going into Dragonflight.
Some of the specializations I play have several more buttons than they did before - Arcane is one example. I could probably get away with not having Nether Tempest, but I take it anyways. I don’t enjoy playing Ice Fury on Elemental Shaman. I don’t enjoy playing with Sun King’s Blessing on Fire Mage, so I take the Unleashed Inferno talent instead.
I’ll take as many passives as I can if I don’t like the feel of a specific active ability. I don’t want to gimp myself too much, so I’ll try to stay as close to the recommended builds as I can, while being comfortable with any given play-style.
I put major cooldowns - Blood Lust, etc. - behind a modifier - Shift, sometimes Ctrl, depending on how many buttons I have in use, and where they are. Some of my classes have more movement abilities than others, or healing abilities. I generally stick with the same keybind setup across all of my characters, so if there’s an open bind, it stays open.
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I take passives on everything I can as long as I have at least four keys to smash in a fight.
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I like having less buttons. My ideal class has 4 primary rotation buttons, 1-2 AOE exclusive buttons, a few mobility, dps cd, and defensive buttons and then maybe some situational stuff.
For me, personally, I don’t want a ton of rotational buttons and a complex rotation I either have to memorize or get an addon to help with.
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I like passive talents, because I can’t screw them up, and that makes my OCD feel good. I have maximum amount of buttons I’m comfortable with.
I also dislike short cooldowns a lot. I find it annoying when they go out of sync with combat pulls, or I misjudge and waste them. So anything that buffs sustained is my favourite.
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I always choose passive talents unless I know that I need the active ability. That usually only happens towards the few speca that I do know inside and out.
When I level alts though I don’t want to weave a complex or heavily involved rotation when I barely know what im doing
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Passives. If your entire toolkit can’t fit into 12 assignable buttons, you’ve made your game too complex.
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Yes. 90% of the time I take the passive affects because my action bars are full as is.
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I prefer passive talent to active talents unless it adds a really cool looking skill or an interesting utility.
Like I prefer Whirling Dragon Punch on WW monk even though it’s technically a dps loss, because it looks cool, its a free AoE and the condition for use is unique in that both Fists of Fury and Rising Sun Kick need to be a cooldown to even use it.
Mostly because I prefer a constant damage boost to a temporary one on a cooldown, even if as a whole it would be a dps loss in a top tier raiding situation. Or if the passive gives a boost to another skill I like even if it’s lower priority on the rotation.
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Depends on how many buttons the class has in general.
Holy priest? Hell yeah. All the passives. They have a million abilities the more passives the better.
Beastmaster hunter? I can have a 4th button to use? Say less. I’m in.
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Indeed, that’s why I usually macro trinkets into abilities with similar CDs.
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Depends on if I’m playing a caster or melee.
For casters, yeah. I’ll take as many passives as I can get away with.
For melee, not really. Too many passives causes rotation gaps where I’m just auto-attacking until something comes off CD.
For Hunter, I put them in the melee category in this situation. Too many passives and I’ll just be sitting there auto-shooting or spamming Steady Shot until something else is ready.
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I mostly prefer passive talents because adding additional buttons bloats my action bars and causes confusion.
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