TLDR: Here’s my idea https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1xDXE8uUCkxBDTAXVpsVsv2ycS6iiayU2lKKzfaFKhTY/edit?usp=sharing
Greetings,
I’ve noticed a lot of discussion surrounding the current state of the druid’s talent tree, and I wanted to create this post to share my ideas on how it could potentially be redesigned.
As a bit of background, I’ve worked as a professional game designer (not at blizzard) for over 20 years and have helped design a variety of talent tree systems for multiple different games. I’ve been playing wow on and off since classic and I’ve participated in pretty much every form of content the game has to offer.
Now, on to the discussion…
In my opinion, the druid’s talent tree currently has three main issues.
Issue 1: Unhelpful Talents
Multiple talents currently provide no meaningful value to certain specs. For example, Starfire is not a meaningful talent for guardian druids because it generally deals less damage than their bear form skills and is also not usable while they are performing their primary role as a tank.
Talents like these can lead to players feeling as though they are wasting their talent point on something that has no value, which can make the talent system feel more like a burden rather than something cool and exciting.
My solution would be to bring back the old “affinity” talents we had before Dragonflight, and merge all throughput related talents that are specific to each playstyle into the corresponding affinity. Each of these affinity talents would also still have the passive effect they had in shadowlands to ensure they still have some value for every spec, but the cc/utility skills they previously gave would be placed elsewhere in the tree.
For example, Balance Affinity would grant Sunfire, Starfire, Starsurge, and Astral Influence. The cooldown and mana cost reduction granted from Starlight Conduit would also be made baseline. Balance Affinity would be granted to Balance Druids for free and would act as their starting point at the top of the tree.
Making this change would eliminate the issue of having “unhelpful” talents, and in my opinion, would lead to a more exciting talent tree design.
Issue 2: Lackluster Capstones
Compared to many other classes, the capstone talents in the druid’s talent tree are minimally impactful. For instance, warriors have access to Thunderous Roar, Avatar, Champion’s Spear, along with several major upgrades for each of those skills. Druids on the other hand have access to things like Nature’s Vigil, Heart of the Wild, and Well-Honed Instincts.
Although these druid skills certainly do have some value, they are not nearly as impactful as their warrior counterparts. My solution would be to rework the bottom third of the druid’s tree by filling it with Convoke the Spirits, an upgraded version of Heart of the Wild, a brand new interesting skill, and several upgrades for each of those skills.
Implementing this design or something similar would provide druid players with a greater sense of progression, along with creating new and interesting build possibilities.
Issue 3: Restrictive Pathing
The druid’s talent tree currently has 9 dead ends and provides very few paths for players to acquire talents which are important for their build. For example, players must take Thrash, followed by 2/2 points in Killer Instinct, and then followed by Skull Bash in order to acquire Primal Fury, which itself is a dead-end talent. This linear design strips players of the build flexibility which is traditionally possible with a talent tree system.
My solution to this would be to restructure the talent tree in a way that increases the number of connections between talents and removes all dead ends. Doing this would improve build diversity and allow players to acquire key talents without being locked into a specific set of utility options.
Here’s a sketch of a reworked talent tree which addresses each of the three issues I listed above: https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1xDXE8uUCkxBDTAXVpsVsv2ycS6iiayU2lKKzfaFKhTY/edit?usp=sharing
I’m hopeful that this can help inspire Blizzard to make some positive updates to the Druid’s talent tree and guide it in a great direction.
Thank you very much for reading,
-Bubub