TL;DR: Dragonflight’s new talent tree allows players who do enjoy more active buttons to press that luxury, but it should not be the norm nor commonplace when this game has so many abilities that need not be separate. If you’re a classic andy that has 28 fingers, power to ya. Pre-shadowlands ability pruning was only frustrating because the talent tree system back then removed even more agency from the player on top of that.
Let’s be real, the “un-pruning” in Shadowlands was little more than a PR stunt to coax Classic players into trying retail again. And on that note- if you like ability clutter to the degree classic has, power to ya. But speaking from game design experience, it’s a hard argument to justify breaking down dozens of abilities into 2 or 3 separate abilities if they can exist as one single ability, albeit with a little more tooltip text.
Example: League of Legends’ modern champion design is a contentious topic, because every time there’s a new champion, there are a plethora of complaints that they are too complex, and their tooltips are too long. But those complaints always simmer promptly after players actually play the champions and “get it” (Aphelios is the only outlier here, he is a full-blown alien spacecraft control deck). It’s a testament to making the most out of the least, and what it gets them are 4-button characters with an immense amount of skill expression that allows for amazing crowd moments during Worlds or the LCS or whatever.
With this new Dragonflight talent tree in mind, it is the perfect solution to the dilemma at hand. It no longer forces people to choose 1 of 3 across several tiers, which means speccing into the exact passive or active secondary features that you want is within your control. This means if you want that cluttered UI, you can have it. But it shouldn’t be the default, nor should it be majority.
2 examples that I feel sum this up are as follows:
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Shield Charge, Charge, and Intervene exist as 3 separate abilities, and are a royal pain in the keister to macro together just the way you want it. Something always either breaks, 2 abilities will be used at once, or the functionality will backfire. All 3 of those abilities could and should exist as one unifying ability, but with parameters. Mouseover/Help for intervene, reduced stun time but increased frequency for shield charge replacing regular charge and having 2 charges. It’s QOL, frees up space for if you do choose talent tree active abilities, and provides more skill expression with a single ability.
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Monk’s Invoke + Statue abilities. These abilities should be one in the same, and thematically make sense. Place a statue of [August Celestial], summoning an effigy of them at that location, granting bonuses and causing the statue to [Effect corresponding with Celestial].
Anyways bring back item pruning, the classic andy’s arent coming back to retail so can we skip this charade ty
