Hero Spec Visuals

In Development The War Within Beta Test
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The title is self-explanatory.

In an expansion that is touting the reveal of defining hero specialization somewhat seen in the lore through various incarnations, I think there needs to be more emphasis on visuals amongst the specs.

A good example of this is the Death Knight rider of the apocalypse which pulls in famous death knights of old each having a special attack.

A poor example might be the dark ranger for beast mastery hunter hero talent wise.

To continue with dark ranger. Shouldn’t there be more emphasis on the dark hound? What else can be done to modify this aspect of the tree? Can we adjust existing tar trap, or a binding shot to instead pull skeletal hands from the ground to keep in theme. The shadow aspect is largely lost without supporting visuals.

Every hero spec needs a visually defining element so people can see and recognize such in PVP or any other manner of content without even inspecting them.

I also bring this up because if we are putting more development time into solo content etc., " casuals" care more about visuals and fun than putting their stat weights into raid-bots over and over.

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Big agree. I made a similar comment in the Rogue thread.

Everyone knows if they group with a Diabolist, Sunfury, Mountain Thane, Rider of the Apocalypse, or a Herald of the Sun.

There’s no way to tell what kind of Rogue was just in your group without inspecting them.

Even if you WERE the Rogue, you have no way of knowing what hero tree you are playing in combat unless you check your talents.

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Can you or someone please go spec by spec and list which ones have cool effects and which do not? Currently a HUGE disparity which is NOT RIGHT. I am not going to do it myself, but please anyone that is able, do this.

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I find it amusing that a recently released mobile game with blatant copywrite infringement has done a better job of the lightning infused warrior visuals than the hero talents. They should go do some reverse plagiarism and check out the spell effects on that game. Even GW2 has really stepped up its game for the new spear attacks. Meanwhile on the biggest MMO around, I can barely tell the difference in the new expansion.

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I can start looking, will just take me a few haha. May need a team effort here though. I only made so many specs on the beta.

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Elune’s Chosen offers zero new visuals. The only way you can tell is that you picked some previously subpar talents.

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Huge agreement, every single class and spec compared to Demo Warlock with Diabolist pales in comparison. Everything else to me with hero talents is just lacking in looks and does not inspire me to feel like a hero and I am left bored.

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We’ll see whats left to be implemented but at the end of the day people just want their abilities look awesome.

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Hero trees were 100% not made equal on their fantasy.

Archon vs. Voidweaver for example has to be one of the biggest disparities for the same class. So I have a pulsing halo… I still press that crap and forget. It doesn’t look epic. It doesn’t change how it feels to play. It’s just bad.

Then you have Voidweaver which from a fantasy standpoint is one of the strongest they’ve released.

Hopefully they keep working on this even after they leave some underwhelming ones for when TWW goes live (because they will).

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The aesthetic of hero specs is the most important thing! Players want to get excited about a new aspect of their class, and the best way to get excited is with a cool aesthetic.
Legion and Shadowlands did a lot of things wrong, but what they did the best was add new aeshetic options for classes that made you want to play the game in order to earn them.

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Visuals Yes or No for Hero Spec? May not account for visual stuff added to base talent such as overfiend for Destro warlockr or charfiend asset for demo warlock. Blessed hammer for prot etc.

Warrior

Collossus Yes ( seems like new animation in demolish)
Slayer Yes ( technically slayers strike, reused animation? Not really too noticeable given a passive)
Mountain Thane Yes ( lightning added and ground aoe in thunder blast)

Deathknight

Rider of the Apocalypse Yes ( reused model assets)
Deathbringer Yes ( argus scythe attack after culmination of reapers mark)
San layn yes (technically with vampiric strike reused animation)

Rogue

Trickster No ( unseen blade is naturally unseen lol)
Fatebound Yes (A coin literally is thrown on the floor)
Deathstalker No ( not that I can see given passive stack application of deathmark and plague damage)

Warlock

Hellcaller Yes ( Malevolence magic cast)
Diabolist Yes ( Ritual will indeed dpawn the pitlord etc)
Soulharvestor Yes (demonic soul passive spawns entity)

Hunter

Dark ranger Yes( the dark hound basically, shadow damage unseen for most part)
Packleader No ( just extra command damage attack)
Sentinal Yes (sentinal explosion Owl and aoe blue ground effect briefly)

Mage

Frostfire Yes (frostfire bolt, animation looks updated)
Spellslinger Maybe ( not noticing splintering sorcery besides perhaps a tiny side iceicle on winter chill consumption?)
Sunfury Yes ( spheres are obvious)

Monk

Conduit of Celestials Yes( pretty obvious animation cast that seems newish )
Shado pan No ( not notcing anything as its passive)
Mastery of Harmony No (not noticing anything as its passive)

Evoker

Scalecommander Yes and No ( spreading disintegrate is noticeable but not really a new animation)
Flameshaper Yes ( engulf is new ground effect)
Chronowardern Yes ( chrono flame infusion looks different visually)

Paladin

Herald of sun Yes ( dawn of light beam I think?)
Templar Yes( hammer of light big hammer exploding)
Lightsmith Yes ( Can see the sword and shield made of light)

Priest

Archon Yes ( extra halo but smaller reused animation)
Voidweaver Yes ( Entropic rift pretty obvious on void torrent)
Oracle Yes ( FIXED* apparently has sigils with premonitions over head)

Shaman

Farseer Yes( primordial wave spawns ancestor ghost near you replicating spell)
Stormbringer Yes (Tempest visual stack instead of bolt) Btw Ascendension shoul be a perm visual option while attacking lol
Totemic Yes( totem looks ok)

Demon Hunter

Fel scarred Yes ( Demonsurge aoe effect during meta for cleave and bomb shows green eminating off you)
Aldrachi Reaver Yes( reaver glaive looks nice after converting from normal glaive throw)

Druid

Elune Chosen No? (Boundless moonlight one part is passive and didn’t notice fury of elune)
Keeper of Grove Yes ( guardian petals not really noticeable though. Maybe be confusing petals with another ground effect heal)
Druid of Claw Yes( ravage is noticeable but auto attacking was taking forever to trigger the aoe slash animation)
Wildstalker Yes ( thriving growth you can see thorny vines on target)

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Engulf for Evoker is not a new animation. It’s a copy paste of Pyre’s explosion animation. They changed from a living flame copy paste to a pyre copy paste but worse.

Oracle does have visuals, look at your character’s head. You get all these glowing sigils.

Demonhunter Fel-Scarred is barely visible.

Hellcaller gets a malevolence visual but Wither is a literal copy paste animation of corruption, and even worse because after a few pulses the effect goes away unlike corruption.

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I agree that the visuals DEF need upgraded.

However, i would like to note that DOZENS of basic spells also need upgraded. Warlock’s shadowbolt and rapture, and shamans shields to name a few.
If theycant be upgraded, at least give us glyphs so we can pick and choose between the different variations that were used over the years.

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Indeed, I feel like so many hero talents are missing the mark because there’s just little to no signature visual. I know that takes development time but if this IS the big box feature of TWW then it’s failing it’s whole point.

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Thank you for the corrections, was going through every hero spec pretty quick but was trying to get a gist for them all .

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These are EXTREMELY poor visuals, and basically might as well not even be in the game at all. The problem is that even the demon hunter that knows exactly when these things will happen can barely even see them. For fel scarred the demonsurges are tiny and completely drowned out by immolation aura (which you will always have active during a demonsurge) even on a target dummy scenario, not to mention any other spell effects of your own, other classes, or enemies. For aldrachi reaver sure you get a purple glaive. Sometimes. That also flies very fast to your target from melee. So basically a quick purple slash every now and then, which i guess tbf is more than other hero trees including fel scarred, but certainly a far cry from sun pally or rider dk.

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For Hunter:
Pack leader - 100% Passive hero talent tree and visually the single only thing it gives you is that it “improves” the Kill command visual. Without pack leader it’s just your character pointing. With Pack leader you get a red cross over the enemy when the pet attacks. WoW! Incredibly lackluster.

Sentinel - 100% Passive, depending on how you view it. It’s all about a dot and then every 15 it empowers one of your abilities to activate the dot… but it also activates randomly. The only visual here is that you get some arcane stars (?) falling on the enemies. And the empowered ability pops a purple damn owl at whatever spot the enemy target happened to be at when you used the ability. Looks very bland and lackluster if you ask me but perhaps some people like the purple owl? Could have been so much more if they’d tried. A purple dot and some owl is so bad I don’t think I ever could have imagined it. This is not what I thought when they announced “Sentinel”.

Dark ranger - You’d think this one would be easy to make great. Imagine all the lore you can pull from… This one gives you Black arrow that you just use every 30 seconds. No fun interaction at all and then you have RNG all over the tree. There is the random dark hounds that pop out, but they are barely noticeable. And then there is RNG on RNG to get some “barrage” of purple/shadow to shoot at a enemy on some attacks. Better than the other two but very lackluster and bland. This could have been so much more. Same as Sentinel.

Those are the Hunter. Some slight visuals on two of them but very poor gameplay and over all very lackluster visuals. You in no way think or feel “dark ranger” or “sentinel” or “pack leader” when you play it.

I agree. It feels like this is pretty much the big feature we get. Warbands is as well but it’s really more of a support system that doesn’t really have the same oomph. Currently it’s falling very short. I as a hunter main will avoid Sentinel no matter of the numbers because euw wtf? A purple owl spewing on the ground? Dark ranger is cool but oh so lackluster, they fell way short on this one. And then it’s pack leader. Which you don’t even notice. So probably going Pack leader (play SV mainly).

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Demolish is sort of a new animation, yep. Basically a combination of existing animations in a sequence, but still cool IMHO.

Slayer also correct - the slayer strike proc plays the old wild strike animation, an offhand hit. At least it does for fury, Ive not tried the spec as arms.

Thanks for making this list. I agree with the sentiment that hero specs don’t have enough visual flavor. Blizzard has stated something about not wanting too much of class identity to get tunneled into hero specs so that you’re a “Colossus Arms Warrior” but I think that’s the cool part of the hero specs.

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I agree that the visuals are, atleast for me, literally the only thing about hero talents that are interesting. Everything else is just “higher numbers”… When I think about for example Dark Ranger I don’t think “cool, I will do higher numbers”… I think “Cool I can play as a Dark Ranger and Look like a Dark Ranger”…

I am afraid they sort of completely have failed to evaluate the hero talents as important enough to warrant proper work or have failed to deliver on the project. At the moment it looks like both to be fair. But we are still relatively early in beta so we’ll see. Not holding my breath tho.

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I 100% agree with you on all counts.

I feel like they have missed the mark here on what could have been a really cool way to further enhance your fantasy for your character.

Dark Ranger not really letting you tunnel into the brooding, moody aesthetic of that character type as it exists in WoW with skeletal effects, red, black, and purple visuals, and so forth, is a bummer.

Some classes I think they would’ve needed more raw animation work (warrior mostly) or more elemental flavor (mountain thane being the only one that has this really) but for whatever reason Blizzard opted not to take that route and I’m not sure why aside from not wanting the hero spec choice to dominate the class choice visually.

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