A few predictions based on what I’ve heard and read:
Individual specs are going away.
Most abilities are going to become baseline, with many abilities returning from previous patches/expansions.
Talent trees as the source of a character’s sense of individuality will be returning.
Here’s an example of what the new talent trees might look like (if they keep the current format instead of reverting back into something more akin to what they had in Classic):
Exotic Pet Training: Allows you to tame exotic pets and increases the stats of all your pets. Also allows you to teach an additional ability to non-exotic pets.
Lone Wolf: Not having an active pet increases the damage you deal.
Coordination: Deal increased damage to an enemy that both you and your pet are targetting.
Level 15
Kill Command: Commands your pet to lethally attack a target, dealing increased damage if the target is low on health.
Aimed Shot: Stand still and take aim for massive damage against a single target.
Mongoose Strike: Replaces Raptor Strike. Deals increasing damage when repeatedly used against the same target.
Level 20
Natural Mending: Your Mend Pet ability has a chance to remove one negative ailment each time it heals. Also, killing an enemy restores 2% of you and your pet’s maximum health.
Sprinter: Disengage removes all snares and slows when used while also granting a small speed increase for a few seconds. Also increases the movement speed bonus of Aspect of Cheetah.
Camouflage: Allows you and your pet to stealth (cooldown and healing aspect removed, allowing it to behave like normal stealth).
Level 25
Bestial Cleave: Using Multishot or Carve causes all of your pet’s attacks to also hit nearby targets.
Barrage: Replaces Multishot. Rapidly fires at enemies in front of you for significant damage.
Serpent Spread: Causes Multishot and Carve to also apply Serpent Sting for a portion of its normal duration.
Level 30
Wild Protector: Your pet reduces the damage taken of itself and nearby allies.
Trueshot Aura: Increases the damage dealt by you and your allies.
Hunting Party: Increases the haste and movement speed of you and your allies.
Level 35
Bestial Wrath: Temporarily augment your pet, increasing its offense and defense while also making it unstoppable. Also allows it to taunt bosses while active.
Rapid Fire: Temporarily increase your haste by a significant amount.
Assault: Temporarily increase the amount of damage you and your pet deal.
Level 40
Pack Mastery: Allows you to have a second active pet, fully controlable with access to all of its abilities.
Sniper Mastery: Increases the range of your auto attacks and ranged abilities and causes you to deal additional damage to targets that are further away.
Trap Mastery: Increase the effectiveness and duration of all your traps while also granting them two charges. Traps that were limited to one target at a time can now be used on up to two targets.
It’ll be interesting to see what they plan on doing as the prepatch looms closer (though it’s still quite a ways off from today). Granted, the azerite system (and all its attachments) will go away with the prepatch as Blizzard prepares to add alternate power up system(s) in Shadowlands (hence why the talent levels I suggested stop at 50, though I ran out of ideas…).
I think you’re going to be disappointed if you believe there are going to be big class changes in Shadowlands. Especially as big as “individual specs going away.”
Every class will be getting some old abilities back, but that’s it. Blizz won’t be trying to fit them into dps rotations, they’ll just exist and most players won’t be using them. Talent trees are going to be exactly the same in Shadowlands, maybe with some tiny balance changes similar to what we saw in BfA.
Any progression beyond that will come from the new Shadowlands Covenants.
I could very well see this being the case, especially from a corporate perspective… but I still hope they’re able to do something more than just “unprune” abilities.
I’m mainly going by what I heard/read/saw from Blizzcon. I believe they said there would be no class overhauls, and in general it sounded like there would be no drastic changes. And with how much people have been complaining that every single class just doesn’t feel fun to play this expac, you’d think they’d say changes are coming if there really will be any.
Of course I could be wrong and maybe they just didn’t want to announce anything like that until they were sure what they were going to do. But they also said big changes would be coming in patches during the beginning of BfA, so I won’t be holding my breath.
Current talents are a major missed opportunity. Because there are so few of them compared to old talent trees they should be more impactful. Stuff like streamline, master marksman, and calling the shots is very boring.
Instead what they could do is make talents that allow you to build a playstyle similar to older expansions. Say you pick all talents on the left and you end up with a playstyle similar to ranged SV with focus on stings, black arrow, explosive shot, and lock and load. Go down the middle and you have a playstyle similar to pre-legion MM with a focus on chimera shot, kill shot, and aimed shot. Talents on the right would make a legion MM playstyle with focus on the vulnerable mechanic. One talent row should let you choose your mastery, one for old SV mastery (increasing magic damage), one for wild quiver, and one for WoD sniper training.
Every spec has gone through so many iterations over the expansions, there should be no problem finding three of them for this hypothetical talent system. It’s a lot to ask for from these current devs but the customization options would be immense.
I’ll just say to your proposed talent changes that putting AoE and single target talents on the same row is a bad idea, same as putting mobility and sustain/survivability on the same row. AoE should compete with AoE and sustain should compete with sustain.
I agree that talents with a similar purpose should be competing with one another on the same talent row. I tried to keep that focus with the suggestions presented. I recognize that they’re not perfect, but it is just a suggestion of how it could be done.
As pointed out, they clearly said at Blizzcon there wouldn’t be big class changes. By all means, feel free to continue wishful thinking, but specs are not going away.
I hate to be that guy, but at the start of bfa we stacked steady focus and our rotation was 5x steady shot, aimed shot repeat. It has changed. However after that it has been static for a while.
So let’s say you are going to make a priest in Battle for Azeroth. So you make a level 1 priest. Well, actually, you make a level 1 Discipline priest, and you play from level 1-10, and you are a Discipline priest and you hit level 10, and you go: “ Now I want to be Shadow. “
So you select Shadow, and like have your buttons fly away, and all these new buttons appear. A lot of things changed, and it is not even like you changed specs and you got additional things. It is actually like you just changed Classes completely.
So in Shadowlands, when you start at Level 1, you are going to be an unspec priest. You are going to learn all these different abilities, about all your different specs, and then you pick a spec at Level 10, new things are going to come to you, and you are going to become a Shadow priest, or Discipline priest, or whatnot.
A part of that is because what I think is pretty fundational is that Classes are made up of elements — each in different specs — and that spec doubles down on it.
From the transcript itself, specs are still going to exist.
No…
Not as far as we know…
Only a handful have been confirmed thus far.
No, specs will still be a factor. This has been confirmed!!!
The extent of this idea is really cool, but frankly will or would eventually eliminate the concepts of explicit specs, making everyone just a class rather than spec and possibly complicating the social process of knowing what everyone is or does for role’s sake.
I do think the idea of shaking up the current system is admirable, and a return to classes, at the expense of balance would be pretty awesome.
We’d see some pretty huge shifts in how the game is played, with the return of hybrid classes, no longer being tuned to be as strong as dps. And the blurring of roles/support, which allows more customisation at the expense of output balance (currently, pretty rough), and clearly defined roles.
I will say, I wouldn’t mind that shift, but we have no clear indication that this is the case.
Yeah, but what I mean is the system of queuing with people might get more complicated/biased because of rather than having 3+ specs with unique advantages to each one, we’d have very almost strategic and exclusive choices in talents, allowing for almost no room for choice depending on the Talents.