Obviously there was some structure. You couldn’t just allocate your talent points randomly, but there was a lot of freedom in what you could get away with, and a lot of variability from player to player, especially in PvP.
Builds aren’t choices. Well, I mean they are in that you choose which build you will follow. However, that has nothing to do with what anyone is saying in regards to illusion of choice. True choice would be the ability to look at a talent and saying “Oh I like this talent so I will take it.” It is not “If I want to play this build, I take a b and c” “If I want to play that build, I take x y z.” You are still not choosing talents on an individual basis… you are still following a cooker cutter build that has been deemed mathematically superior.
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There are viable builds out there that aren’t posted on any big website. If you’ve never made your own special snowflake build and done well with it, you haven’t actually played the game.
A “roaring” success? Out of all like 8 servers just a few are full. This is a niche project for people that want to relive the glory days only to realize they were terrible and come running back to what we have now.
That said, I played back then and I also miss the old talent trees. Bring them back regardless of how classic performs.
Not any more than it would mean the complete removal of flying, Demonhunters, Death Knights, Monks, worgen, goblins, blood elves, draenei, allied races, dailies, world quests, achievements, transmog, LFR, LFD, LFG, stackable items, collection tab, jewelcrafting, inscription, archaeology, artifacts, swimming mounts, a fourth spec for druids, or bringing back the deadzone for hunters.
If you played on a PVP server like I did, you were a free kill anywhere outside an instance portal unless you were a cookie cutter Arms build, and it didn’t leave any room for tweaking. You needed MS and 5/5 Enrage. 31-20, done. The only wiggle room along the way was what weapon spec you took, and Sword was pretty much a no-brainer. And of course, respeccing was actually expensive and couldn’t be done on a whim, so guess what you ran for almost the entire game! Remember tanking dungeons as something other than Prot? I do!
DW DPS was also pretty damn cookie cutter. You Took BT and Impale, and most of the talents along the way were no-brainers too. 2H Fury Slam spec was viable at late raid level, but very few people ever got there because there were rather more barriers to raiding at the time. And even then the only change was that you dumped DW Spec into Imp Slam, Imp Execute into 2H Spec, and had to relearn your entire rotation to time Slam around your swing timer, because none of the devs actually expected anyone to ever use Slam, lol.
Tank? You pick up Cruelty, Tac Mastery, and put the rest into the most obvious choices in Prot – and yes, they were very obvious. At very high gear levels you’d drop the 5% dodge and put it into more threat in Arms (and if you got as far as Nefarian you took Imp Shield Wall for all of one phase transition in the entire dungeon).
Cruelty and 2 points Tac Mastery were basically mandatory for everyone. Impale was mandatory for all non-tank specs. Even the late-game prot shift for threat was just moving toward the same Arms talents everyone else already took.
Please, tell me what I missed.
It was usually whatever weapon your race gave bonuses to if it applied.
Fair enough. That being the case, retail has the exact illusion of choice. All I know is that in its current state, this game simply isn’t fun for me anymore. And I know it’s because it has changed.
The GCD changes are godawful. Previously baseline class abilities being stuck in the PvP talent pool is godawful.
Eh.
We’ve come too for a return to old talent trees, I think. The best we can hope for is a talent “de-pruning”, but going back to the old days of “five points into something that increases your crit by one per point” are gone.
Yeah, this is BS. I don’t miss the old trees, but I’m going to enjoy having my full spellbook back at least.
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There are bigger problems than MoP talents.
- Azerite / Gear based character skills - must go next expansion.
- Half done classes / gear based character skills - ditto.
- Rep exclusive to World Questing - game needs tabards back or a banner system.
Those three right there are much higher on my list and many others I’m sure.
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If memory serves Cata moved it to “you couldn’t spend points on a second three until the first tree was at a set level”
IE you could at beast ‘dip’ into another tree but that was it. No more 20/20/20 sort of deal. It was 40/20/0 sort of thing.
I’m of course off on the exacts but you get the picture.
Not like it could really take them that long to figure out. BfA feels like it was designed and made in roughly 8 hours by some drunk high schoolers. I am sure 9.0 will follow the continuing horrible expansion ‘content’ established in WoD.
The point of classic existing is so they dont have to make retail like vanilla, it can keep moving in whatever direction its moving…isnt it?
Maybe it will bring to light some modifications but i saw the move to launch classic as a “now stop complaining” move
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None of those were Ghostcrawler (Greg Street)
Former game director Tom Chilton is in a Blizzard shirt and Alex Afrasiabi is in a wow shirt.
Makes sense they would be there since they still work for Blizzard . Ghostcrawler moved on to League of Legends
I look at it this way . Even though there are cookie cutter talents in the current set up just like the old talent trees the difference is the old system had more cookies in the jar. Now we just get those broken ones that everyone just left in the jar.
Arms was a PVP spec, full stop. The extra swing was much more valuable than the other effects. You could have an extra 5% crit, or you could have a 5% chance of an extra swing that gave additional rage and could also crit.
Obviously if you ground out Unstoppable Force and that was all you had access to for a while, yeah, spec whatever you were swinging. But sword was best in a vacuum.
Now that I mention it, I think you are correct.
Heh, all those edgy responses. I absolutely agree with you. Talent choices are much better now than they were then.
That said, while resto is in a good spot there are a lot of other specs not in the same position. There might be a choice between aoe and single target on some rows, or the utility one prefers for a given fight may change on others, but there are still plenty of completely dead talents.
Did a quick Google. Found a Cataclysm Calculator. Patch 4.3.4
41 points at max level. You had to sink 31 points into your primary tree. Then you could spent 10 points as you saw fit in the other two trees.
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