I mean, borrowed power itself is fine, I think most people just dislike how tedious and inflexible it is right now. Both in terms of how long it takes to earn and how little they seem to like you adjusting it.
It all came about because everybody quit during wod because it was only endgame content and no chores.
It’s not the borrowed power is a good thing. It’s not.
But “maintained power” (for lack of a better term) cannot be maintained over the length of a 20 year game.
At some point, there is merit in Blizzard’s system/cycle of: mudflation for 3-4 expacs with a squish/reset.
I don’t want to ever get to a point where I’m doing 77 million damage from auto-attacks.
No it pretty objectively is a good thing lmfao.
If only you could have been bothered to read two more sentences…
Personally, I’m fine with squishes. What I’m not fine with is the fact that, aside from stuff being shifted around due to reworks, my character hasn’t actually gained any abilities since WoD. We’ve had 7 talent choices since then, and no new abilities have been learned since then. Everything associated with our characters ‘growing’ has been tied to systems that get reset every expansion. At best, maybe one or two popular borrowed power mechanics get worked into the talent rows, replacing unpopular options. But I’m not gaining anything that’s permanent.
Legion’s impact on our characters was nil. We gained nothing new while leveling up; and artifacts, legendaries, and the Netherlight Crucible were all wholly disabled.
Blizz was a little more charitable with BfA, allowing Azerite and Essences to remain active for level 50 and below content, but we still gained nothing while leveling through that expansion that we got to take with us into SL and beyond.
SL I can’t personally verify since I didn’t buy it (for the above reasons), but the level squish did give Blizz the opportunity to stuff some abilities in the 51-60 level range, including several that players already had prior to the squish. Aside from that, obviously all of the stuff related to covenants, conduits, soulbinds, whatever else SL has is not going to be moving forward into DF. So SL didn’t really add anything to our characters either.
Basically, you can strip away the borrowed power systems, and there wasn’t really any difference between max-level characters in WoD, Legion, BfA, and SL aside from just level. They all have essentially the same buttons to press unless they happened to get reworked at some point along the way. Bearing that in mind, I didn’t see a point in paying for expansions anymore. But this modern overhaul of the traditional talent trees does give me hope that I’ll finally get to grow my characters from one expansion to the next again.
Those have nothing to do with what I said in response to your first sentence.
You said borrowed power is not good, when it is.
The only thing I feel needs an absolute change so far is interrupts being on the tree.
But the rest I can compromise on and in general like skill trees over pick one of three.
They said they are building this for the future. It is staying. And the only thing I see changing from each expac are adjustments and what’s on the tree.
I hope they do like they say and make it so that there is no need for borrowed power. My concern right now is none of the three trees shown seem to reflect that. Sure some have covenant abilities. But they also supplemented with secondary systems like conduits, essences, the crucible.
Hopefully the trees take on more supplementing that in their final versions and not just,make the hard choice between skills in our book we already had separate from talents without having to make a choice.
Let’s throw some logic at this.
When? Generally things don’t get brought back, they just get stripped down until they go away. This is an overhaul of a broken system.
…but… why?
I have explained it already.
This type of tree shaped talent system is based on character levels and points.
When players get higher levels and more points, this trees will be expanded and inevitably bloated.
We will end up again with talents of +1%/2%/3% damage, -1s/2s/3s cd, etc. This system cannot be expanded unlimited without being meaningless eventually.
And putting baseline abilities into “talent points” will make class/spec imbalance even worse. There is no choice but cookie cutter build.
Blizzard (Ion) has already commented on this. I believe, that their plan is to do really cool things now, and worry about the issues that will pop up six years from now, six years from now. Which I completely agree with. I think they should be willing to take more chances, while doing things that the community will simultaneously embrace and like. The talent tree overhaul was a great choice.
So, you aren’t wrong, there will be issues later on, but the model that they’ve built is pretty sturdy and the way it’s set up can be adjusted on the fly or for longterm needs.
I think the Disc tree proves this is wrong. Excluding the priest tree, the Disc tree alone allows for at least 2-3 unique builds, not including the Priest tree which adds more variation. Now, you aren’t wrong that some people will look up the BiS builds, but, the new system should be breaking away from those niche builds.
I will make sure to bookmark this thread so I can come back and see how well it has aged come the next expansion.
Everquest and EVE Online have been around longer and still release content .
So even as bad as BfA and SL were and what may come in DF will probably not finish WoW.
Exactly. People greatly overestimate what it takes for a game to survive. Even if WoW is at a million players that is still at least twice as many as EQ had in it’s prime and EQ still does expansions. WoW isn’t going anywhere until Blizz decides to pull the plug.
THey were already working on Legion by the time WoD released .
The lack of content in WoD wasn’t why the borrowed power systems were created , WoD lost content because they were already working on the systems because the original plan (and a failed plan at that) was to release Legion 1 year after WoD released.
So it was actually the systems they were planning on using going forward with Legion that caused the lack of content in WoD and not the lack of content in WoD that caused the systems.
The problem with current talent system is not the form/shape itself, but the abilities.
There are indeed many “dead talents” in current system, because players will always choose BiS abilities, just like they always do. But they are rarely “+1%/2%/3%” or “-1s/2s/3s” and most of them are impactful. Blizzard just need to tweak and balance them.
However, the current talent form/shape is great, it is a system of 7 rows of 3 “independent” abilities. In theory, if all abilities are “interesting/competitive”, we have 3x3x3x3x3x3x3=2187 possible combinations.
DF tree shape is a 10 rows of 1-3 “dependent” abilities. In order to get a certain talent, you need to follow a “path” which has probably only 2-3 variations.
And you need to take some talents you don’t like, just to get the talent you like, because lower rows are “dependent” on previous rows. It is a much more rigid systems with less real choice.
The tree shape PATH system itself is flawed and a decrease of QoL compared to current one.
You will go down 2-4 paths in your talent tree, not just one. You have two talent trees simultaneously, and in each of those you will have at least 2 major talent paths, and as many as 4. Meaning that you can effectively complete your talent tree 2-4 times.
Yes, but it doesn’t change the fact that, tree shape talent is more rigid and less flexible than what we have right now, because of the dependent nature.
Then call for that specific talent tree to change. Holy Priest apparently has some issues, and they could probably do a little more work on it, but I don’t think they should scrap the entire talent system.
Have you actually played with the trees? I have for both my mains and I have access to more with the new trees than I have now.
they don’t just look good they look amazing and we are getting a good mesh of old + new + poe style talent trees and I am all for it as seems a decent chunk of the player base. But you can die on that hill if you want to that this is all bad