New talent trees

Classes Druid
141

I don’t think that’s really a nerf. The class tree isn’t very competitive and you have plenty of points to easily pick up a straight line down the Moonkin abilities down to Innervate. Ferals are going to want to do that anyway to grab the range extension. That makes all of the utility except for Remove Corruption very easy to flex in or out depending on the content.

Remove Corruption will be difficult for non-Restos to pick up since it requires 3 points instead of 1 but given all the new utility we’re getting in exchange I don’t really see that as a massive loss.

142

To click Survival Instincts, you must also click Brutal Slash

I really don’t know how to describe this annoying feeling

6 Likes
143

How else are players to look at the new system when we have no way to play the class or the specialization to understand the reasons for the choices they’ve made? That’s not on the players to just think everything is going to be all rainbows and butterflies, so without context, then looking at the systems via the current and only lens we have makes the most logical and appropriate sense.

Both systems suffer from the exact same problem.

If you look at the class tree for example from the perspective of Mythic+, it isn’t like you have a choice to give up spending a talent on Skull Bash so you can get something farther down another tree. It isn’t like you’re going to give up access to Soothe on a Raging week, or access to Remove Corruption if we have dungeons like Plaguefall, Halls, or Sanguine Depths.

Sure, the new talent tree gives us more options to play with and create unique builds if you compare them to the soulbind trees of the covenants, but to think that they do not suffer from the same problems is disingenuous.

Interesting, yes, but whether its even viable highly depends entirely around my point about Maul earlier int he thread; is it actually going to be reworked so that it has meaningful value rather than being a button we simply remove from our bars 99% of the time.

They tried to make Maul an interesting gameplay mechanic in BFA with the azerite traits and that effort fell faster than a dumbell in water.

Things can always look interesting and cool in a vacuum, but until the implementation is known and the scaling/balancing is experienced, any feedback given at this stage really should be taken with a grain of salt because we don’t yet have adequate information to pass judgement outside of using existing or even past expansion gameplay to say whether what we see makes sense or not.

144

This just screams out “I NEED SOMEONE TO WRITE ME A GUIDE SO I DON’T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT HOW TO PLAY MY CLASS”

Most people understand how the talent trees with the point system work (most, not all), and understand that you don’t have to choose one or the other or that you NEED to pick anything at all.

I don’t need to write down 2+2 on paper every time to understand that it equals 4

1 Like
145

But that all comes at a cost to things like Typhoon, Hibernate, Renewal, Skull Bash, Well-Honed Instincts, or Improved Frenzied Regeneration. While you can easily mix and match based on content, what happens when content demands a combination of those?

The natural answer is to bring another support class that offers those things, like another druid for knockbacks with Typhoon for Sanguine weeks, Mass/Vortex for Necrotic, or Remove Corruption for those curse/poison heavy dungeons, but what we fail to consider is what’s the situation if that spec is piss poor for Mythic+ and just isn’t competitive enough to justify bringing them.

I’m not saying that we cannot sacrifice things like Well-Honed instincts in favor of some of the healing options with a laser bear build like from Legion, but who even knows if that model is going to be viable in the content one wishes to play?

There is no harm in raising awareness of gaps we each see from our own experiences with playing the game and at least getting the devs to take a step back and think about whether that is even a cause for concern.

The answer may not be to change the class talent trees but to enforce a specific design philosophy for content, specifically dungeons, so it is designed with these new more restrictive talent options in mind.

That again depends on the design of content in Dragonflight. We had several dungeons where Remove Corruption was most definitely an MVP ability depending on dungeon key level and composition, so I think its far too early to say whether its a massive loss or not but its at least forth waving a flag to say “Hey, this could be problematic if…”

146

I think you highly misread what I wrote, so let me try again.

When players look at the new talent trees and make assessments about whether talent is viable or worth the choice, or show frustration about having to spend X talents on these proceeding rows to just obtain Y, or discuss the accessibility of specific talents for a given specialization, it is only logical to make those based on your current and past experiences with the game.

The issue isn’t about understanding how these trees or spending points work, or someone needing a guide to know how to play one’s class.

We were asked for feedback on these trees. Without Blizzard giving us any knowledge into the design of raids, dungeons, and other content in the new expansion, the only basis on which we can then base our feedback is to use the lens of Shadowlands or past expansions and make assessments on how the tree layouts, accessibility, and flexibility plays out in those experiences. If we see gaps, those may not be gaps in Dragonflight, but without that context, it’s disingenuous not to at least raise caution for this to be problematic should past design choices carry forward in content design.

147

Hmmm. I think this is more of a Guardian problem than a Feral one. I was able to make a Feral tree that picks up Skull Bash, Incapacitating Roar, Remove Corruption, Soothe, Well-Honed Instincts, Renewal, Stampeding Roar, Hibernate, Typhoon, and Ursol’s Vortex. I passed on Innervate, Maim, and Heart of the Wild.

I was not able to repeat the trick on Guardian because Guardian has more “required” points in the class tree than Feral does. Feral needs to pick up the Skull Bash section (5 points) and the Primal Fury section (4 points). Guardian needs to pick up the Skull Bash section (5 points), the Ursoc’s Endurance section (4 points) and most importantly, the Improved Frenzied Regeneration section (3 points). That’s an extra section that Feral doesn’t need and makes Guardian points a lot tighter. If I go heavy survivability and abandon the Balance line then I can still get Ursol’s Vortex, but I lose Typhoon and Hibernate. In theory there’s an easy fix though… a line between Improved Barkskin and Remove Corruption solves the entire problem for Guardian.

Truth be told though I’m not so sure how large of an issue this actually is. No matter what build we make, we get A LOT of utility including some utility that we don’t have right now in SL. Being forced to make compromises on the one or two pieces of utility we have to leave out is the whole point of class trees, no? I doubt there will be that much content that requires ALL of it.

148

Forget maul. Its dead to me.

Legion style Arcane Bear with Galactic guardian, twin moonfire and Fury of Nature leggo is where its at!

5 Likes
149

I understand that. But these assessments are also made through the lens of how things play out now in SL.

As pointed out, you can do something like:

People aren’t looking at the combinations of what’s possible, they just see something they don’t like and never think of the actual possibilities. Right now, Scent of Blood is a stand alone talent. It’s that OR PW. It’s not Scent of Blood AND PW

2 Likes
150

…and anyone whos ever ran both in torghast will tell you.
There is nothing bad about it. Its insane!!!

Get hyped!

(except the 6 second buff, thats needs to be longer)

2 Likes
151

First off, thank you for taking the time to work with the tree and see the pain points. It’s not often that someone takes a moment and understands the problem before replying.

I brought up this exact suggestion in my earlier post on the class talent tree and I think that would most definitely help solve most of the problems I see. It would then open the door for having these leaf nodes in the tree be talents we occasionally swap based on content as you had suggested without overly sacrificing any of our toolkit as we have today.

That may be the case for non-Guardian specs, but there is no build where Guardian does not lose something they already have right now and to me, that’s the rub. I’m fine loosing something I have for something I don’t already have, but that’s not the case here.

1 Like
152

Well, first off I never spoke about Feral nor do I personally care about it.

Secondly, my assessment and issue with the talent system is mostly with the class tree and not the spec trees. The spec trees are going to be mostly dictated by tuning and if you decide to play the spec with talents that perform badly, that’s your choice. If the talents that perform the best are not what you wanted, well it’s been that way for years, nothing new.

Now specifically coming back to this:

If you take a deep look at the class tree, you’ll see that this may hold water for Feral and to a lesser degree Balance, but other specs like Resto and predominately Guardian suffer badly when you stack up the possibilities to what are the current possibilities.

That fellow druid, is where my problem lies.

153

So i have a big concern for the following Druid (Class tree) Sooo Most of the core Skills Like frenzied regen barkskin, Ironfur Ect ect… I am currently trapped/limited when it comes to Someone who plays 3 of the 4 specs and seeing how most of the Specs Core abilitys are locked in the Druid Tree.

im kinda Curious on how this is going to work out for those who Multi spec… is it going to fall under that situation where depending on what im doing for said dungeon im going to have to Remember to Fix my Druid tree to make sure i have all the right Nodes unlocked If i want to Catweave While Healing, Or Off Heal when im tanking im just running into some issues at the moment i cant make it past the 9th row W/o Sacrificing some Crucial things
So are we going to have a Loadout for Each Spec??? Cause looking at other trees we actually end up losing points for the Druid tree depending on which spec we choose

154

They’ve already stated that you can save entire builds and insta swap to them in rested areas or with books, or when changing specs so itll be the same complexity or less as changing a build now.

1 Like
155

Way too many baseline abilities moved to talents. Wanting to keep the same class complexity as shadowlands is a mistake, classes are too simple. Typhoon, skull bash, cyclone, soothe, hibernate, remove corruption should all be baseline. Class tree should all be utility choices: CC vs mobility vs sustain/defensives. Spec tree should be about choosing a playstyle, for example feral speccing for big bleeds or big bites. That’s how you get real choices.

13 Likes
156

The most logical and appropriate sense is to look at it for what it is: a preview of the talent system.

2 Likes
157

pls Blizz, feral NEEDS some unique utility skill for pve, feral can’t compete with classes, also needs to relocate talents from this tree

3 Likes
158

For the most part I am happy with these talents, my only concern is that some talents that seem extremely crucial to a build (pvp, m+, aoe raid, etc) are locked behind weird talents that don’t really give any benefit to that build. Soul of the forest for rdruid, as an example, a crucial spell in pvp healing rotation, is locked behind 2 points in a wild growth aoe increase, which is a spell not often used in arenas. Certainly, its not going to make or break anything, but it doesn’t necesarily “feel good” putting points into a talent you don’t plan to push or even potentially spec in to.

Futhermore, spells, like wild growth, that have so many resto talents that improve said spell, should not be so deep in the tree. If I plan to build my character into a “feral affinity” resto druid and I don’t have the points to pick up wild growth, theres about 4(ish) dead talents in the resto tree that I still need to pick up in order to get certain other crucial rotational spells (aka soul of the forest for pvp). Wild growth should either not have so many talent points that require you to get to more single target healing spells in the resto tree, require less of a talent point commitment to obtain so far down in the tree, or just be baseline.

Cyclone, and to less extent, hibernate, also are really important druid spells that I believe should be baseline or at least easier to obtain in the tree.

Also, why is wild charge/tiger dash choice node the only path that goes upward, rather than downward and you HAVE to talent into soothe (something that has 0 connection to mobility) to obtain.

Lastly, based on the feral tree, it seems as if rake no longer will stun people from stealth unless you’re feral. Rake stun is so nice for the rdruid pvp kit and I would be sad to lose it.

Overall very happy with these changes though! Nice direction and hopefully will be a breath of fresh air for the game!

1 Like
159

I think it’s actually a new starting point that you can select after you spend 8 points. Going up the tree isn’t possible so that’s the only explanation that makes sense.

1 Like
160

that would make sense actually, interesting