Lightsmith looks like it might be fun.
Brother Maynard, consult the Book of Armaments!
1 Like
Hello all,
Long time player, first time poster.
Thank you for sharing the preview of the hero talents. I like the direction and expansion of the new talent system. Building, expanding, and iterating on the system is wonderful.
Feedback I would like to have, or more information I suppose, is the intent of this system being evergreen? My initial assumption would be that as time goes on, more hero talent trees are added or trees are expanded. However, I am curious how this lines up with increasing levels on characters in future expansions?
Feedback I would like to give, is on the part of the article here:
âWe want players to be free to choose the Hero Talent tree that has the gameplay, visuals, or flavor that they prefer.â
I believe that limiting a hero talent tree to two specializations takes away from that freedom. For instance, the Mountain Thane. Wonderful flavor, theme, abilities. Let these heroic themes shine from building upon the class tree mainly.
Allow players to be a Mountain Thane Warrior that specializes in Arms.
Allow players to be a Deathbringer Death Knight that specializes in Unholy.
I believe that if you enhance the theme of the class with Hero Talent trees, while Specialization Talent trees handle rotational and throughput skills this will allow your players to really have freedom for the gameplay, visuals, and flavor that they prefer. I caution on being restrictive to syncing hero talent trees with specialization talent trees as this seems to not fully support the stated goal.
I think this route can also help the overall system with ability pruning and homogenization, with hero talents expanding further into Utility and Visual themes and allowing for really custom characters. Where certain types of Utility, new, existing, or enhanced, are placed within the Hero Talent Trees.
This route also helps with alleviating your own self imposed restrictions, such as: âEach Hero Talent concept must be appropriate for both of the specs that can use it.â
And allow your goals of: âEach tree will offer or modify some class utility and include defensive bonuses that are useful to all specializations. We are aiming for all trees to be about equal in the amount of utility and defensiveness they provide.â to really shine.
Another piece of feedback I would like to give, is on the part of the article here:
" For iconic Warcraft character archetypes, we wanted to be sure that we could deliver on their fantasy with World of Warcraftâs classes. Blademasters just wouldnât be Blademasters without abilities like Wind Walk and Mirror Image , but those abilities donât fit in a warriorâs toolkit."
Donât be afraid to press your creative boundaries. Donât let fear of modifying existing abilities, or even creating new ones stop your goals. Maybe those abilities work well as the âKeystoneâ and âCapstoneâ for that theme.
Let your players have fun, while you have fun bringing these fantasyâs to life as you have done these past years. And iterate on them as needed, this being a live service game is a wonderful atmosphere to be able to do that.
As for the âiconic character archetypes that are strongly tied to specific races and factions.â
Keep going! Allow for folks to experience that particular combination, and with the work being done to allow for all classes to be available for all playable races, that is defiantly a step in the right direction. With a more âfriendlyâ rivalry between the Horde and Alliance, sharing knowledge and skills between all races I think fits the message you are delivering in the game currently. Let your players roleplay and immerse themselves in the game through any avenue available. You have so many players, not just roleplayers, that would enjoy being a Blademaster, Dark Ranger, Witch Doctor, or whatever iconic character archetype you implement.
An example I would like to present is the Brewmaster Monk. Iconic for Pandaren certainly! Fits Dwarves very well too! And with the additions to Brewfest, more races fit that theme, even though it is a specialization tree. And now, almost all playable races can be the class monk. Youâve built upon the theme, expanded the scope, and encouraged the freedom of the class and specialization in an evergreen way that accomplishes the earlier listed goals. Keep going!
My last piece of feedback refers to: âThere are 11 nodes in a Hero Talent tree. The first of these unlocks with the system at level 71, and you earn 1 talent point per level from level 71 to 80, so you get every talent in the tree by level 80.â
I encourage you to build this Hero Talent Tree within the current Talent Tree System. Where a player levels up, and a player gets a class, specialization, or hero talent point. But, perhaps make the Hero Talent Tree available at level 40, or 35. Let players level up and use this system, especially new players. It will all work out the same in the end, because it is part of the overall system.
Build for the game, not the expansion.
This earlier access shakes up the leveling process. It allows for more customization earlier to keep folks engaged. It just makes the system and game better overall, in my opinion. Award the Hero Talent Point, every few levels between the Class and Specialization Talent Points. Levels 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80 would be a nice spread to gain Hero Talents, though this sequence is just a suggestion of an implementation for the feedback given.
This makes most of the feature available right at the start of the expansion, and allow folks to have fun pre expansion, where more tuning and feedback can be gathered on a live realm during that time. And this still supports the goals set out on how you envision hero talents, I believe.
Thank you for the preview! I hope the feedback is helpful! Keep making the game the best game out there!
1 Like
Armorless ascetic thatâs a master of a weapon? Big monk beads? Yup.
Recommendations for talents and balancing:
We already have several talents that are locked behind specialization, yet we are seeing even more talents locked behind specialization here with âHero Talentsâ. Many players play the specializations that they do purely because they enjoy the playstyle and the aesthetics that come with the abilities of their chosen Specialization. Others play Specializations purely based on number generation. Locking these talents behind Specialization does one of three things for customers;
-
- The playerâs class fantasy is locked behind a Specialization that they hate playing
-
- Class/Specialization Meta is consolidated into a small group of classes/specializations
-
- The âHero Talentsâ hits everything perfectly for that individual on both class fantasy as well as fitting them into Class/Specialization Meta Composition.
From what I have seen here on this forum thread and several others, as well as experienced, the 3rd is extremely rare. I like the conceptual idea of âHero Talentsâ. Personally, the âHero Talentsâ that I want to play are locked behind Specializations that I either rarely play or hate and will not play. Highly recommend making all three of the âHero Talent Treesâ available to every Specialization within their given class.
Honestly, I do not know the skill level the playtesters have in-game. From every patch to every expansion, there has always been a small group of Classes/Specializations that make the âMetaâ. Having played almost every Class and Specialization since I started playing in Original Vanilla, it seems as if the in-game skill of the playtesters is at best average when one Class/Specialization or another has come out with insane offensives/defensives/crowd control/utility and other Class/Specializations are on the bottom of the barrel. If the playtesters were objective with balance among all Classes/Specializations and had a skill level of around 2k in arenas/mythics, I do believe a lot of the balance issues would almost completely evaporate. Some of these âHero Talentsâ are completely broken whereas others are completely useless. In many cases here, there is no middle ground. I may be completely daft and the playtesters are exceptionally gifted and skilled in-game. From experiencing it throughout the years I do doubt that has been the case. It also could be the case that many of these talents have not yet been playtested.
Hoping to see some amazing changes in the upcoming expansion and patches to come.
1 Like
When is the next preview? 
2 Likes
All seems pretty cool, cant wait to try it, but still would like to see at least in the future a Warden hero spec for rogues. Maybe changing shadow step to blink behind enemy. Maybe add Plate armor and make fan of Knife do a lot a threat and add a new damage based tank to the game with one hand Glaives. Also Blademaster would be cool. Good luck!
1 Like
It has a 2min cd. You arent gonna benefit from it majority of the time, since dks just use lichborne as a personal dr
Prot Paladin Main, and Prot Warrior alt here.
Over all I think the Prot paladin talents look and sound exciting. I have only one large concern. The Main feature. I like the idea of being this tank who is also a cleric but even though Im a mythic raider and clear above 20s m+ each season⊠Iâm a clicker. abilities that require me to click the ground are horrible for click casters like me. This talent set up seems like its being based on Aug evoker support idea. I think making it more passive and having less things to clutter my bars with would be best. Maybe tie it holy power generators⊠or at least for prot paladins, avenger shield. This give prot paladins the feel of option. Which do I need to do; Generate holy Power or use AS to give Armaments. Thats just my suggestion.
Prot warrior wise I like the theme, but I do wonder if it will bring enough utility or defense as a tank. It be fair this could be the more dps oriented talents, which would be fine and pretty cool option is the other option helps with tanking and utility. I noticed one talent requires Intervene and iâm hoping that means it will become baseline. I do feel warrior where chopped up to much and then handed base line abilities as talents to âmake interesting choicesâ I think giving back some of these like intervene would help with the class tree a bit. I will also admit too that even though saying I want more abilities⊠that also at the same time my warrior has too many abilities. I am unable to fix them all onto my bar. Maybe fusing Intervene with charge again would be helpful, but also I think hero talents might also be a good way to fuse some of these together.
Thatâs my thoughts, I think making paladinâs main feature tied to an existing ability will make is work a lot better. Warrior is kind of the same feed back but that thereâs no clear ability that the talents needing it, just it would be a good opportunity to fuse some abilities in fun and interesting ways
Appreciate the effort going into these. As a Paladin, I just hope there is a Hero Tree with straight passives. I am not fond of having all these extra keybinds. I can only imagine how more complex classes feel.
One thing I would love to see with these is maybe a way to cross spec? For instance: BM Hunter with a polearm if not dual-wielding one handers.
So when is the next hero talent preview? 3-4 talents every 2 months seems kinda lame ngl
At that rate weâll have a complete preview in about 4 years.
Putting these out for feedback early is awesome. Though I am concerned that this might make it harder to rework things for DKs like their squishiness (Frost used to be a tank⊠
) and talent tree.
So stupid. Over this dying game. Hpal completely useless in PVP. PVP forgotten about.
These hero talents are a bandaid.
Can we please just get on with it?
The whole talent tree has so many useless talents.
I want stuff like this to be at the forefront of design again and not the math or balancing side of the game to dictate design!!!
Just do whats fun and forget about mythic balance and/or maintaining a high difficulty curve.
Make Ret more like warrior, give them leap or something close to it. It would be so cool to crush down from the sky with holy light and crush the ground with aoe.
1 Like
can we get a hoplite build ( pole arm shield ) spec for warrior they were caled hoplites and they probly more accurate from real history via Spartan and Roaman . i personaly would like to play as a spear weilding warior with a shield but bliz never gave us the option. and the stance would be like that of the Gladiator stance from that past expansion . .
1 Like
Definitely a missed opportunity to have Protection/Arms Hero Path name be Gladiator.
Then another name I like would be Hellion.
From a Barbarian type character from Darkest Dungeon.
Could fit either Fury/Arms or Fury/Protection.
Either stop forcing the dnd mechanic or make it follow us or pulse around us if you insist on keeping it a thing.
2 Likes
The paladin tree if it does not change, will be the final straw. Fix it.