For my spec the talent trees are way more cookie cutter than back in Vanilla. There are literally 5 rows which never ever change talents. Only 2 of the 7 have any choice at all.
I really hope for their next expansion they totally redo talent trees, as I believe many other specs are in a similar predicament.
Cool so you could play an unorthodox build when you massively overgear the content, thatâs still the case now.
Old talent trees were boring because they were mostly passive and didnât really change how specs played except for hybrid PvP specs.
If you were doing some kind of hybrid spec for PvE, you were just hurting yourself.
The main downside with current talents is balance.
In my 12 years playing this has never happened to me once , not saying it didnt happen because well wow players can 100% go over board.
This is no different to now.
Skill trees added depth and complexity , they allowed you to create builds optimal to sub optimal and everything in between. I use the sorc as example from d2 with 19 possible builds because this is the power of skill trees with a gigantic matrix, now this is little unfair to use it cause of the diverse loot table in D2 compounds this effect even more than WoW.
Now with talent trees they do nothing that skills trees didnât do, what imo they do is limit mistakes and makes it easier on Dev side to balance.
What skill trees do better than talent is the leveling experience.They can create replayability. Being able to choose when and what your character gets access to can change the leveling journey, which some people really enjoy. Skill trees can also add to the feeling of progression.
Overall imo they offered more meaningful choices that work in mmoRPG setting.
I have to go to work and my sub is up so if no reply my time on servers is done.
One of my old high school buddies lived for playing around with various combinations of talents and gear. On both his mage and his rogue he was constantly making trips to the trainer to try out some tweak or another and even used an addon that allowed him to draft and save new builds while he was away from the trainer.
Today, the game has almost nothing for people like him, and thatâs pretty sad.
The problem with talents now is theyâre very much interested in us switching them on a per fight basis, which sucks from a character identity perspective and makes each fight have its own cookie cutter solution.
This is not what was envisioned in Mists. I chose my talents for a reason.
When I feel nostalgic about old talents, namely classic and cata because bc and wrath were just such a mess, I find what I actually miss is that they donât lock me into a playstyle or even necessarily a role. In classic I could spec feral, put on a dress and main heal. Nothing like that is remotely possible anymore.
Granted today you can just swap specs, but it feels different. And you still need the gear.
I miss the old talent trees too, I leveled alot of characters and the point to use every level was a engaging reward. Making the trees a tiny, forgettable shrub was not an improvement.
Those talent trees were super dope, I really miss them and itâs one of the things I am most excited about with Classic.
Sure, no one cheers at 1% crit, it feels like going to the gym for a month and losing a few pounds. Incremental progress. You look back in 10 levels and say âwow, I am so much stronger now!â
Talent trees feel like personal growth, like you earned it.
Retail WoW does not feel that way.
To be fair, 1% crit is quite meaningful in classic wow. what may seem meaningless and trivial to you may be very important to a min/maxer with hybrid intentions. SM/ruin warlock build has 3 popular variants for instance. Rogue had Hybrid Hemo, daggers,fist and swords combat builds. While Assassination and Subtlety were both popular in PVP with 2 variations each. many involving riposte (a splash into combat tree) and some not. That diversity alone is what folks crave and if you donât get it, you donât get it. no worries.
100% agree on the fight to fight thing. Itâs annoying. I was doing the Motherlode yesterday as Fury. I want Storm Bolt so I can stun the Mech Jockeyâs at the beginning so they donât get in their mechs, then at the first boss I want double time so I donât miss any DPS when he pushes people away, then for the Alchemistâs I want Storm Bolt again just to give myself another interrupt option for their Transmute Goo spell or whatever itâs called. Nothingâs worse than forgetting to switch, hitting my storm bolt button, and then nothing happening because I donât know that spell.
Is this what Blizzard wants from their talent trees? Something I am constantly switching between fights. This is the only talent for Fury that I ever change. Every other talent is locked in. Can you really say this is a meaningful decision? I donât really have to decide for either, if I play properly and stay stocked on tomeâs I basically have both.
thats rogue mace spec my friend i knew it well.
Not the way theyâve been doing it lately.
Mists and WoD, yes. But ever since they started wanting us to change talents all the time, no.
For feral, I have to take my talents that undermine my spec identity (dot maintenance and energy pooling) and turns me into a spam build/finisher spec. Funnily, I donât have to decide between single target or aoe, because my aoe talent is best on single target.
Itâs totally fubar. Theyâve busted the new talents so bad theyâll have as hard a time fixing them as developing a new system.
I would like to see a hybrid of the old talents and the new ones. I like the cata model with the first choice being between specs, and a spell that defines the spec (but Iâd like to see spec not necessarily lock you into a role⌠I wonder if people can handle that these days). Then give people access to every tree in the class instead of just their spec tree. Give people a point every 5 levels and let us loose.
Druids and DH would be a bit of a problem, but whatever.
Yeah but this was a warrior. Back in Classic they had Mace Specialization that had a chance to stun will using maces. I looked up an old Classic talent calculator so I could remember what it was. Basically, I had 5/5 Mace Spec, 5/5 Dual Wield Spec and 5/5 Enrage. So I didnât have any end tier talents. It was pretty stupid, but fun.
I could swear I had Flurry too, but Iâm not sure how. Maybe that was in BC?
It was probably TBC. Blacksmiths had a mace that had a chance on hit to stun their opponents. Youâd frequently see Warriors stun locking people with it in PvP. I vaguely recall my friend telling me that people were calling the build âPlate Roguesâ because they were like Rogues in plate. I thought it was a 2hander though but I could be mistaken.
I donât know, was it really that thrilling and exciting to gain a level and a talent point to get an extra 0.2% critical rating?
If you read the thread you would know that the answer is no. Something like +1% to crit wasnât exciting. The exciting part was having more decisions, more room to innovate, the ability to create interesting hybrid builds. The current system offers no meaningful decisions. Most talents are auto picks and the ability to switch talents on the fly means that the few talents where you do have a decision to make you can just have both by swapping as the situation demands. My example was for Motherlode I want Storm Bolt for the trash at the beginning to stun the Mech Jockeyâs, then you switch to Double Time for the first boss, then switch back to Storm Bolt for an extra interrupt option on the alchemists. The only talent where I have to actually choose between 2 things I want but I can just âhave bothâ thanks to Tomes.
As was pointed out there only existed the illusion of choice due to optimal builds. Anything going away from that was trash.
I would argue that where talents today are not popular, then those specific tralents should be re-evaluated, or possibly the row changed entirely to better fit itâs theme of the row.
As was pointed out this was only true for like the top 1% of players and even then innovation still popped up from time to time.
Also the illusion of choice issue is still present today so the argument is just âitâs okay now but it wasnât okay thenâ
Youâre remembering correctly. The first couple of Arena seasons were dominated by that weapon as well as mace stun combat rogues.
The really bad players ruined it and the new options do generally give you more options over all the old trees were 90% fluff like .1 sec off the cast time of x ability, crits do 50% more damage, +1% damage to x ability, mandatory skill you had to pick up. The current trees are far from perfect but even dreanor perks were more exciting than 90% of the old talent trees.