Talent systems big W or L?

Community General Discussion
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Wow has an interesting history with talents systems, initially, or when i started playing anyways… hmm think max level just went to 80 (wrath), at the time, you’d get your first talent at level 10 then one point every level thereafter, giving total of 71 points to allocate in whatever fashion you wanted.

If i recall the way it worked out was 60 in the main tree, then 11 to utility, potentially in other spec tree for utility or more dmg. Im sure anyone who plays classic can expand on this, not the point tho.

Then, came Cata or was it MoP, not sure, but the talents became baseline, and rather every 15 levels, players got to choose between 3 abilities, for a more, simplified approach.

More or less stayed that way thru SL until DF where talent trees where reintroduced.

Now, there is certainly a creativity aspect, an added layer of player involvement, to being able to customize your character in way more depth than with simpler builds, but then again is that really the case? Do talent trees offer the added freedom to custom tailor abilities to fit a certain desired play style? i mean that should be the idea behind the talent trees, offering multiple viable options, right? like eye-beam dh, or zip-zoom dh, or glaive throw dh as an example, we can save the sigils build for the vdh…

Anyways, whats the feel, have the talent trees worked out the way they were intended to? did they allow players more diverse playstyles as opposed to a cookie cutter build? what of class& spec balancing, and with the addition of the hero talents, are we gonna see more good of a good thing, or more bad of a bad thing… or maybe somewhere in between?

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Time will tell. I want to see what they do with the resources freed up by implementing an evergreen system instead of the revolving door of throwaway systems.

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I really enjoyed the new talent system. We need to keep in mind though that there’s always going to be a “minmax” build and that’s a balance issue, not necessarily a talent tree issue.

That doesn’t mean it’s not without it’s flaws - primarily for me, I think some trees are too restrictive in that you need to take useless talents to pick up skills later down the tree.

I also think that the UI could be more friendly to the completely uninitiated; it can be daunting, and the “starter builds” don’t offer enough to the user in terms of explanation.

I think hero talents are a really cool addition to add more customizability and complexity to class builds - and on top of that, they can add class fantasy. I’m looking forward to trying them out.

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well yeah, on a bit separate note, but the delves really have me curious

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The new talent system is more engaging. I won’t repeat the same stuff I said every time this subject comes up, but I will also say that some trees still need work for some specs.

And no, it’s not bloated. No, it didn’t force everyone to use seven billion buttons.

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It’s kinda hit and miss with me. I like that there are a lot of options, and I often do play with something other than a cookie cutter build.

On the other hand, it’s just too much. For me personally, the trees have too many choices? Weird to say that, but it’s true. Whenever talents get reset due to changes it takes ages of staring at and dinking around with the trees to get them working again. Like, I’ll just give up and log out sometimes because it’s just too much to deal with.

Honestly, I kinda wish the trees were shorter, more stuff went back to baseline and we got a point to spend like every other level instead.

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I’m not a fan of how it added several more buttons over the previous xpac.

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I think it’s a good start, but some need work. I’d have rather Blizz spent TWW continuing to iterate and improve on these current talent trees, then maybe add hero talents in the following xpac.

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Same here. I’m just worried about the “twists” and “catches” that are added to that system. Hopefully, my worrying is all for nothing.

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As someone who started in TBC, unsubbed in BFA, and then came back in DF I like the talent trees. I’m free to make a build that fits my preferred style even if it’s sub-optimal. Like, I just don’t enjoy abilities like Colossal Smash or Primordial Wave or Void Form and the current system lets me do builds that don’t have those abilities.

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You aer not a real warrior or Shadow Priest if you don’t enjoy those.

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The tiered talents system was implemented in MoP, I think. Cataclysm still had the old talents, with the change that you were forced to spend a minimum amount of points in one specialization before it’d allow you to spend points elsewhere.

IMO, Blizzard trying to “solve” the issue of cookie cutter builds was a fool’s errand. There will always be people who follow the “minmax” build no matter how you design the talents.

My only real issue with the current talent system is that things that were previously baseline to the class and/or specialization now require a talent point to be spent to get it back. Basic things like interrupts and dispels requiring talent points feels wrong to me. Also leads to a worse group content experience because you just know people can and will disregard utility to get an extra point or two in whatever increases their performance.

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well i guess the interesting thing is, does it really add choices tho, esp when you take tier sets into considerations, it really does limit your capstone choices, for instance, I would love to run shock-wave build as prot warrior already has garbage utility next to other classes, but, that would conflict with my tier, which really requires that i run roar, so that my already crappy damage does not suffer further.

Now to this you might say, well just run with utility classes, but hopefully anyone who pugs, understand further issues that presents. There are countless examples to illustrate this and im not even going to talk about vdh, but say prot pally, if i run pally instead, ill probably do 30+ interrupts more throughout the course of a dungeon, just due to shield procs. that is a crazy amount of damage not going out, other players not dying, healers getting stressed less etc etc- then i have not touched on other things pally would bring to the table, brez, hof, bubbles and so on and so forth.
yes this is a m+ perspective and maybe in raid that would not matter, but, as M+ increases and most people pug, these are sort of central issues… so forcing limited builds with limited classes, not the best experience.

Anyways, i wont stop playing warrior cause of that, but i really wish the tier didn’t force the build, which for some specs i play, it certainly does.

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It was the MoP prepatch, during Cata…

And that system remained with us for almost a full decade… We’ve had the cookie cutter talents longer than the original talent trees!

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My take:

Largely a success in terms of what kinda of accessibility it has given most people.

There are more ‘build’ types I’ve seen nowadays than before Dragonflight.

Downside - some really enjoyable talents like double tap/fervor of battle were changed or removed.

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well the thing is, its not minmax, bec if you run soul scar build as dh, you will do 200k+ if you try to run a pure eyebeam you will be lucky to hit 75k. if this was more in the order of 5-15%, then I really wouldnt have a complaint. And its not even that the build is bad, it was meta start of S3, but, if you didnt run the “right” build, which is largely just 1, then you would certainly limit yourself if “competitive” content, thus you dont really have a choice, it becomes a “wowhead” copy and paste sort of a deal.

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I dunno, not super familiar with DHs, but that sounds more like a balance/numbers issue than an issue with the talent system itself.

I’m sure being pigeonholed into certain builds by tier set bonuses is a part of it, though, like you mentioned earlier with your prot warrior example.

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All they did was move baseline abilities to the talent tree. It’s just as boring as its always been.

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I liked it… also I’m not a minmaxer… so I mostly looked for ‘Passive’ and picked that…

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Yeah, I’m not cool with the class sets forcing the player to pick a certain talent. That’s butt. If it weren’t for that, I’d say the trees do give more options.