Feedback on Classes in Dragonflight

[Reshyk-cenarion-circle (Reshyk)]

@Kaivax

We also heard feedback that placing interrupts on the talent trees can be frustrating, due to the impact that these abilities have. While we do not yet have any changes to share, this is a topic that we’ve discussed internally and something we’ll keep a close eye on during Alpha playtesting.

I really, really hope that interrupts on the class tree don’t change. In fact, I think the placement on some of them are too mandatory as it is. (DK being the big example.) Despite what some of the community have been saying, interrupts are only mandatory in Mythic+. Mythic+ is not the only form of end game content and I like having the opportunity to untalent my interrupts in situations where it wouldn’t be useful in order to pick up something else. In raids the necessity of an interrupt varies by boss fight and even in PvP I can see it being something worth giving up against certain enemy arena team comps. I’m also happy that being on the talent tree means that Balance and Resto now have access to it (even if it is expensive access.) I think that allows for some interesting build choices for them.

There’s nothing special about interrupts that make them any different from other pieces of situational utility. So long as they’re easy to access for every melee class (an interrupt should never be more than 1 point off any sensible build) then I don’t think there’s an issue. If we’re concerned that making interrupts “optional” means that it’s possible for bad players to show up to dungeons without their interrupt talented… I don’t think that’s a real problem. Bad players will make bad decisions. As they improve they will learn to make better decisions, including that interrupts are very useful in dungeons. I also think that starter builds largely alleviate this problem since you can nudge newer players into taking their interrupt.

@Kaivax

There were a few comments regarding the placement of niche abilities such as Hibernate or Shackle Undead into the talent trees. One of our goals for these new talents trees is to allow players a wide variety of choices among abilities that are useful for different types of content, and we feel that talents like Hibernate or Shackle Undead exemplify this. Nonetheless, for this and all of the above, we’re taking this feedback into account as we work on further iterations of the talent trees.

Similar to the above, I hope this doesn’t change. To me the most exciting aspect of talent trees is that I can exchange situational abilities for something else when they’re not needed. So I think that situational utility like Hibernate and Shackle Undead are the most important abilities to keep on the tree as well as the most important talents to put in a spot that is easily skippable. (For instance I think Soothe’s placement on the Druid tree is very bad since that’s a situational ability but its placement in the tree makes it mandatory.) I think that the vast majority of situational utility (including interrupts) should be placed this way.

[Manather-area-52]

@Rainsóng-area-52

The interrupt thing really does need a bigger discussion I think. If you guys thought there were a lot of M+ complaints in SL, just wait until every DPS doesn’t take it in favor of movement or more damage.

Everyone said this on covenants before SL came out. Reality is everyone went the meta covenant for their spec and it wasnt a problem.

[Warzug-mankrik]

@Quercus-ghostlands

Evokers need an earth warden-y tank spec.

More like, Shamans need that, no? It’s long overdue

[Dixlap-bleeding-hollow]

I think MM hunters need to be able to lust without a pet out.

[Thrymyrden-stormrage]

I’m kind of sad that you don’t address the fact that we are barely getting anything new and in fact in some cases we are losing things (such as unholy death knight). I want my pre-Legion level of spells back.

[Rothulian-zuljin]

Unholy DKs having to pay talent points to reduce Death Coils cost by 10, just to make the spec function, is really silly.

Then add onto that we have to pay another talent point to gain 3 runic power everytime we pop a Festering Wound…

Some things need to be baseline and not talents.

[Leafmealone-dalaran (Leafmealone)]

Should I even consider keeping my feral druid some area’s of the tree’s just don’t feel good.

[Felforsale-illidan]

How many alts do you have? I’ve counted about 5 so far in this thread alone.

Edit: never mind. I kept reading and lost count at near 10.

[Illidia-magtheridon]

Id rather our base abilities like Heart Strike etc be removed from the trees and made baseline, and more flavor/optional talents added.

Instead of a core required ability why not something mire interesting like making Death Coil be useful for blood?

[Samou-aegwynn]

@Illidia-magtheridon

Instead of a core required ability why not something mire interesting like making Death Coil be useful for blood?

This, or put something frost/ice themed that does damage on the class tree as well

I felt really underwhelmed by the class tree for Death Knights, as they have a hugely diverse set of themes for their specs and yet get very little crossover in the class tree (as opposed to the Hunter class tree, that one is my favorite so far)

Yes, they definitely should look at the DK class tree and put more options like the one you suggested. (It looks so bare/minimal when compared to the other classes too)

[Rothulian-zuljin]

The Unholy DK tree is quite bad when compared to others.

[Foxhound-fenris]

Get rid of the Weapon Type specialization from Warrior’s talents.

Polearms/Maces, Swords/Axes is horrible, stick to One Handed and Two Handed for future iterations.

[Haavi-barthilas (Haavi)]

@Kaivax

For the classes that are not listed above, we’re still developing their talent trees

Retribution rework please. Tired of having my favourite spec be unthematic, no longer provide valuable group utility, and forever being below average in terms of actual performance as well.

Give people a reason to play the spec outside of sunk cost fallacy.

[Thrymyrden-stormrage]

Can unholy PLEASE get gargoyle baseline and can we get icy touch and plague strike back as baseline? As it stands I won’t be able to justify playing DK in live when I can play the better version in wrath.

[Rothulian-zuljin]

Unholy got a pretty big blog post. Check wowhead.

[Kothaeyre-tichondrius]

Can we get MOTW and Thorns back? Also, Paladin blessings? Pretty please?

[Âllganks-bleeding-hollow]

Please make DHs viable. For the last 2 raids our number one damage has been borrowed power and we are penalized for using one of our spenders in most cases. It is almost as if the dev team went “Well, they are decent tanks. They can be mediocre DPS.”

[Kaiba-garona (Kaiba)]

@Kaivax

Dragonflight Alpha test is upon us, and we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who read and responded to the talent tree previews we posted in the WoW blog over the last few weeks.

Looking to the Alpha

In this first Alpha build, we’ll have Druids, Death Knights, Priests, Hunters, Rogues, and Evokers available and ready for feedback. We’re asking testers to initially keep several things in mind:

There are UI elements, such as specialization choice, which are works in progress.
Some talents do not function yet, and these are labeled with Not Yet Implemented (NYI).
There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

For the classes that are not listed above, we’re still developing their talent trees, and they will be brought online in the coming weeks. The responses to our blog previews were highly valuable, as they allowed us to make some early improvements while we didn’t yet have a public test environment. Going forward, we aren’t planning to publish any additional Dragonflight talent previews in blog form, since we’ll add the remaining classes to the Alpha as soon as they reach their ready-to-test state. Our next class coming to the Dragonflight test environment will be Shaman.

In this Alpha build, you’ll see that testers can only swap talents and loadouts when in a rested area. This is a temporary measure, and our intention for talent and loadout swapping long-term, and for Dragonflight launch, is to allow it to be done without the need of being in a rested area or the use of items such as Inscription Tomes. Other restrictions will still apply, such as being out of combat, and not being in an active M+ or PvP match, but we want players to have the freedom to change their talents and loadouts at almost any time. We’re also planning to add a few seconds’ cast time between moving from one loadout to another, or between adjusting and respeccing existing talent trees.

Working from Feedback

We got some great feedback from our talent blog posts, and we want to share some of those points of feedback, as well as our current thoughts.

When comparing the talent system currently in Shadowlands and our revamped talent trees in Dragonflight, we’ve heard feedback that these trees might potentially be too complex or unapproachable for some players. As a result, we’re planning to include starter builds, which are default talent selections that players can opt into as a guide for players that do not want to heavily interact with the system. We’re also discussing using them as a default talent selection given when players log into Dragonflight for the first time. We’d like to make it so that players who are leveling up and do not wish to stop and select talents can simply opt into a starter build to track which talents they should take as they level up.

We’ve heard feedback regarding certain talents only working if you’ve selected other talents on the tree, or a talent not doing anything if you haven’t talented into the ability it augments. Initially, when we built our first trees (such as Druid and Death Knight), we were comfortable with players having to talent into multiple talents or requiring specific talents for other talents to work. As we’ve progressed in development, however, we’ve decided to remove many of those dependencies. There will still be a few occasional exceptions to this, but they should not be as prevalent as they were before. We plan to update many talent trees over the course of the Alpha to address this.

We also heard feedback that placing interrupts on the talent trees can be frustrating, due to the impact that these abilities have. While we do not yet have any changes to share, this is a topic that we’ve discussed internally and something we’ll keep a close eye on during Alpha playtesting.

There were a few comments regarding the placement of niche abilities such as Hibernate or Shackle Undead into the talent trees. One of our goals for these new talents trees is to allow players a wide variety of choices among abilities that are useful for different types of content, and we feel that talents like Hibernate or Shackle Undead exemplify this. Nonetheless, for this and all of the above, we’re taking this feedback into account as we work on further iterations of the talent trees.

Thank you

We greatly appreciate all of your feedback on our prototype trees, and we’re very excited for you to see everything else we’re working on. Thank you!

Ahem… See Below:

Demon Hunters
Here are some posts from the US forums that more than highlight the issues:

• New Class Tuning and dh?
• Havoc 9.2.5 ATTENTION
• How is this okay?
• The current issue with Havoc
• Havoc reliance on borrowed power
• Odd Design

Please help us…

[Furrylover-ragnaros]

We’re getting MOTW back, even though it would be awesome to get Thorns back. In turn, the blessings should also return, as you say, and other powers that in the past were eliminated unnecessarily.
PS: revert the nerf of the drums

[Veemonx-agamaggan]

I hope the “default” build can be used in solo content and normal and heroic dungeons and LFR and maybe normal mythic dungeons. Due to the fact that this new talent tree as it stands right now is way to complex for the normal and average players.