It depends on the content they’re doing, I don’t think any catastrophic builds are going to prevent a new player from completing the campaign or doing world quests. Plus there’s still a starter build they can use.
If they’re doing delves or other low-pressure content then they can learn the game and fine-tune their builds at their pace. If they’re a new player trying to get into endgame content like m+ or raiding then they’ll probably just use a guide. And optimal build guides were a thing even before these talent changes.
Seems like as good of a reason as any to keep it, then.
It’s sort of a six of one half dozen of the other type deal. If you think the new talents are too confusing, there are guides for that. If you like to experiment, that option is there too.
I like to run non-meta specs and talents on my alts.
Yes, I actually prefer the Mists of Pandaria (MoP) talent style — but not the way it eventually turned out. I liked the idea of choosing talents based on personal preference and playstyle, picking what felt the most fun for you. However, as always, min/maxing quickly took over, and players started to default to predetermined “builds” depending on the situation.
This problem became even more noticeable when Blizzard began placing talents for single-target (ST), AoE, and open-world/miscellaneous content all on the same row. It pushed players into “mandatory” choices rather than real customization.
In the end, what was a revolutionary concept at the start ended up feeling like a streamlined version of the old system — there was always a cookie-cutter build, and the idea of real “choice” became impossible.
So you think it’s fine for someone to call for Ghostcrawler to go to jail?
What options are there? We could add up and compare numbers of abilities we’ve had access to over the years - those have fluctuated up and down over the years in spite of the talent systems we’ve accessed - but I would contend we don’t really have any more options now in a way that matters to gameplay. We seem to have access to more defensive abilities at once than we used to. That has had its own impact on how encounters have had to be developed, which I don’t think are very positive. In other cases we have to choose between core abilities where before we would just have them, or have had to purchase them back in the day. At the end of the day though, tanks will tank with their tank abilities, healers will heal, and damage dealers will do damage in the same fashion their designs have outlined more or less since they were introduced, barring major reconceptualizations that were talent system-agnostic.
What are these options that you are thinking of that we didn’t actually have access to before in previous systems?
If they could make leveling meaningful with the sparse talents then I’d be more for it. But it really sucked only getting one new talent every 15 or so levels.
See the MoP style tree was touted as great because they, in theory, could keep all the choices balanced because they had less things to balance. In practice, Ret Paladin (for example) often ran the same exact talent set-up, for all content, for the entire expansion because they never actually balanced them. If they are only going to take a talent pass once every expansion, I’d rather the DF style than the MoP style.
The original trees kept the classes as a whole thing, and you could specialize on whatever you wanted, making hybrid specs a thing.
Cataclysm forced you to pick a spec, being objectively worse.
MoP just streamlined those choices.
DF came and ditched (though not all) the stat-based talents in favor of gameplay choices and abilities.
The current trees are great in fooling people into thinking they have choices, but most prerequisites are way too restrictive.
At least DF+ trees allows you to pick more things “per row”, and that’s the only advantage over MoP style talent rows.
That’s a huge negative though. DF trees and their infinite loadouts take min-maxing to the next level and makes the choice of a “talent” tree completely moot in the RPG sense: Your character is no longer a “class” with special talent in some areas.
Vanilla talent trees, with their restrictions on talent swapping and loadouts do.
The new ones, not so much.
This new tree is the exact same thing with another coat of paint.
It amazes me how people can’t see that.
As a matter of fact, min-maxing will always dictate an optimal selection, regardless of the system used, so using that as an excuse as to why system X or Y is better is always terrible.
We really needed a blend of both systems.
Keep the passives and small effects on a large tree, and the meaningful ones MoP styled.
The real issue, as mentioned in this topic, is that Blizzard failed to balance the MoP rows.
I did not like, nor will I ever like having 6 rows, with only 3 choices in each, for a total of 6 options spread out across large level gaps. Bloody ridiculous from level 15-90 in MOP
fundamentally felt unrewarding to go large amounts of time leveling up without something new to add or alter in your toolkit.
Is the current system without faults? No, but I’ll take a tree format where I can add small incremental changes, with new talents or added passives altering my abilities…over “you leveled up, pick one talent of three and we’ll see you again in 25-30 levels to do the same”. I think Legion did it for what, every 15 levels? (Been away from WoW for nearly 10 years) but the sentiment still remains…
Regardless of tweaking & balancing, what appeals to me the most is Vanilla thru Cataclysm trees and current system we have…
I doubt they’d go back to MoP style now, after the effort they’ve put into these talent trees. I think MoP style could of worked at the time, had they put forth the effort they do now.
I’ll agree with this that Dragonflight Style feels more like a progress is being made as you level up, but alternatively that also comes with its own caveats.
Because we have all of these talents they all have to impact your spells in multiple ways, making it vastly more complicated than before and its very evident in healers.
An example was in WotLK for Shaman healing it was largely Maintain Eathshield, Put Riptide on important targets, and Chain Heal + Healing Wave handled the vast majority of your healing.
Now its, all of that while also keeping aware of High Tide, don’t forget to unleash life, and using healing stream totem, and weave in some Lava Bursts when you can, but also make sure to use healing rain when you have Downpour active, but don’t forget about Earthen Wall totem, but also…
People express that this game is difficult to get into, and the Dragonflight Style of talents is contributing to that before we even get to Hero Talents.
If Blizzard had a hard time balancing talents under a simple system, when adjusting the relative power of a talent requires comparing it to the two alternative talents in the same row… then why would people think their balancing would get anything but worse when you add in a bunch of new variables they need to remain cognizant of as they balance other active and passive abilities around them?
It’s their opinion.
No different than you belittling people who like the current system by saying “they think it adds complexity when it doesn’t”
We have like 35 points to play with in the talent tree. There’s tons of options.
All the options. Instead of everyone having the exact same thing built into their spec with mainly utility as options, I can pick and choose what I want to focus on. Like with MM, I had to deal with Black Arrow being the main component of the spec. Now I have the option to either go with Black Arrow again, or something else if I so choose.
You got “abilities” as you leveled up (much like now with level 20, you can acquire your Barbed Shot or Multi-Shot for example).
Absolutely not. Mists talent system sucked majorly and it needs to stay dead and gone.
They aren’t. Source: the 2 million downloads of loadout addons so that people have more loadouts than the game allows.
All of this.
They didn’t matter— except when you were locked out of important things like survivability or speed boost, because you got screwed for an entire talent row.
Those four choices were still crap choices, regardless. You can absolutely get to where you want to go with the current system. You were absolutely locked out of one or the other permanently with the crap four.
You were instead locked out of important things.
Crap. System. And it couldn’t grow with us. It was horrible.
Go play Classic.
Recognizing hyperbole is not your strongsuit. Their point still stands: that talent system was crap.
I don’t know how you could. Warlocks got majorly screwed with those crap choices.
And that’s not engaging nor fun. The old system could not grow with us, screwed people over and was horrible design for leveling.
Extremely different. If you want to go cookie cutter, go for it. But the 2 million downloads of loadout addons prove people enjoy having tons of different builds.
