Instead, they should integrate elements of lore that were too specific to make an entire specialization out of.
Things like Dark Ranger, Scalecommander, and Mountain Thane are fantastic little concepts that truly have me excited to create characters inspired by the smaller but flavourful facets of WarCraft lore.
Meanwhile, things like Slayer and Hellcaller are incredibly generic at worst and, at best, interchangeable with existing specialization fantasy to the point that they add nothing.
In cases like these, I would encourage Blizzard to be bold. Go Blademaster instead of the generic “Slayer” and add some Mirror Image- and/or Wind Walk-inspired gameplay. Add Necromancer instead of the Demonology-adjacent “Hellcaller” and let those Affliction and Demonology Warlocks expand their taboo grimoires with a few summons swapped out for Undead.
This is likely our best chance to explore those elements of class fantasy that have been left behind. Let’s not squander this!
What substitutions would you make?
Which are you looking forward to?
For reference:
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what’s a light Smith is that holy pal?
and oracle… that sounds real cool
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Honestly I don’t really even understand why we’re getting Hero Talents. Was it a requested feature or something? Why not just give us another deeper-end talent?
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It will pertain to two specs, but like you say, it might strike a little too closely to the Holy spec. Stuff like this should be thought through more thoroughly - maybe even tie to closely to Tyr!
This sounds like a spec, within a spec. My brain is confused
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Because the longer they extend the tree, the more complicated and “expensive” it becomes to reach specific talents. Adding them in a 3rd tree is much simpler for both the players and devs
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Because it breaks the balance of choice that has been established in the existing trees. Throwing in five more talents can create combinations in the existing selection that weren’t intended and add a new layer of complexity in balancing them that likely is more trouble than it’s worth.
And I, for one, used to be one of those people asking for “prestige” classes way back in the day. This is likely to be as close as we’ll ever come to the concept.
Way back in vanilla, I made a thread suggesting “prestige” classes. Examples I have included Orc Shamans becoming Farseers, Dwarf Warriors becoming Mountain Kings, Night Elf Priests becoming Priestesses of the Moon, and so on.
While this isn’t a 1:1 realization of that concept, I do think that the idea - or a shared germ of an idea - has existed in the community for quite some time.
And yes, it is talents within talents. The existing classes as they are playable do not encapsulate all of WoW’s lore. Almost, but not quite. Things like Farseer, Blademaster, Dark Ranger, and others have been left on the cutting room floor. This is their attempt and our chance to have those concepts integrated into gameplay.
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But that’s exactly how the vanilla trees work. If you’re afraid of balance or “being too expensive” then the MoP trees were your best bet.
And that’s why they trashed those trees. And they don’t want to repeat past mistakes.
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Vanilla trees were also a lot less complex in terms of what each talent did, they also treated active spells within them less like choices and more like levelling perks. Currently you have multiple active abilities / capstones per tree and it’s balanced that you only get a handful of them.
There are buttons you are not necessarily supposed to be able to have in combination with eachother. Vanilla-Cata didn’t have that.
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Indeed.
They’re more-or-less just dressing up an additional choice node - I don’t know why that’s freaking people out.
For me, the fantasy is more important than the mechanical reason for existence, though. I don’t want to see it fumbled.
“Farseer” is a term with deeply-seated roots in the WarCraft universe. That excites me. Whereas “Totemic” is a generic term with no history in the universe outside of shamans using totems. That’s trivia, not fantasy. I would prefer if they, for example, took the Spiritwalker concept from WCIII and applied that concept to totem mechanics.
It’s little wins like this that will make all of he difference in how this feature is received.
Yeah I definitely feel you on names being a little under cooked in places. As a priest I am very happy with what I can see though.
Also important to say the point of hero classes isn’t to marry two specs together into some sort of amalgamation as many seem to think. We saw in the deep dive with druid that the trees weren’t necessarily about letting balance druids be better healers, it was more about how a theme that two specs share could be utilised by each one to enhance what they already do.
Honestly, I was let down by the Priest choices. Like Warlock, they seem pretty interchangeable with the specializations. It’s like they were filling in a Venn diagram and just brainstorming terms that would make sense for two specs rather than looking for an existing fantasy to flesh out and asking which specs it would most make sense for.
I think for priest that is uniquely exceptionally difficult because of how the class was already built of two diametrically opposed forces and a 3rd spec finding middle ground. Its always been a problem whenever bliz try to marry priest back together again and I was much more worried than I am now after seeing the names.
Replace Totemic with Shadow Hunter is top of my list.
We are getting Farseer, Keeper of the Grove, Dark Ranger, and Mountain Thane (Mountain King). Why not take it further and bring in every WC3 Hero unit that fits? Are these not “Hero” specs?
Alongside Farseer, let’s get Shadow Hunter for shaman.
Archmage and Blood Mage for mages.
Lich for death knights.
Those all seem like easy fits. Shadow Hunter is enh/resto, Archmage is Frost/Arcane, Blood Mage is Fire/Arcane, and Lich is Frost/Unholy. Easy-peasy!
Blade Master and Warden are harder to place, due to their abilities being split across more than one class, but figuring something out is doable.
Tauren Chieftain seems really specific to a faction leader class, so Spirit Walker could take it’s place and be the third Shaman spec. Priestess of the Moon similarly seems to be passing the baton to Sentinel.
Fire Lord, Pit Lord, Dreadlord, and Crypt Lord (all the lords) just don’t really work. Sea Witch would alter a class outside the scope of Hero Specs.
And I think Tinker should be it’s own full blown class, with a healing spec based off the Alchemist (even though alchemy is already a profession).
I think that covers all the WC3 heroes that aren’t already playable. I’m really passionate about Shadow Hunter making it in. That would be a dream come true for me.
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I hate the idea of spec fantasy. I believe Mages suffered the most from this direction of fantasy.
Mages use to be Mages first. All three schools were utilized significantly. Then with Legion they pushed it into this idea you’re mostly just one school. It killed the awesome vibe Mage use to have.
This is why i’m excited to see Frostfire on there.
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I think before asking for changes we should see it in action.
They overtly said they want us to express misgivings as early as possible while they can still pivot.
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And we have 2 things to go by. Let them release the data for the others, so we can make accurate feedback. Instead of going “I don’t like this” We cannot give good feedback without it.