No matter what system Blizzard implements… This is an MMO with a natural competitiveness. Every class and spec is going to be optimized to hell on every guide. If you care about percentages then you choose the same build as everyone else. If you don’t care and have the option, you didn’t have to choose.
TL;DR It doesn’t matter what system there is, there is always optimization.
Then I guess all that outrage with Legion removing abilities was false.
Remember Wildstar?
They all told their player base this - you can no longer play that game because it shut down due to a lack of players!
More people than just meta players dislike the button bloat. And frankly, Button Bloat is an issue exacerbated by PvP Talents & the Modern Talent trees.
Having many active abilities is fine, I was very anti-pruning when WoD came out. However, having all of these mutually exclusive active abilities that you only take situationally is bad, it feels very clunky, and it exacerbates the problem of button bloat.
Wod+Legion nuked original class design. Having come back to retail from Classic, I literally do not recognize any of the characters I played.
One can dislike pruning in one instance and like it in another. Especially when Modern Button Bloat is not remotely the same as the prior case of Button Bloat.
Modern Button Bloat is exacerbated significantly by the way modern talent trees & various systems (PvP Talents, etc.) work.
It’s not just meta players complaining about button bloat. I also dislike button bloat when it comes to damage abilities. Utilities and situational stuff can take up as many buttons as they like, but I shouldn’t need to remap 14 keys just to get the most out of a basic damage rotation.
I like what they’re doing more of in TWW, with Icefury as a good example: when Icefury is active, it replaces Frost Shock on the bar, so you can cast it and Frost Shock without bloating your action bar excessively.
I like talents which take buttons off the bar (like Annihilator for Fury Warriors removing Raging Blow), or anything that replaces another basic ability (like Gloomblade replacing Backstab for Sub Rogue) because it feels like a power boost, yet it doesn’t add layers of unneeded complexity or button bloat.
I’m a huge fan of most of the changes I’ve seen for TWW so far, particularly in the area of slowing down the button spam and reducing the necessary hotkey real estate for ordinary play.
PvP only buttons really annoy me tbh, even as someone who PvP’s a lot.
The main issue with the talent tree “bloat” is mostly CC/defensive/offensive CD related. Like why does every class have 4 different forms of CC on different DR’s and 4 defensive CDs now? No reason for that at all.
There’s also healers like holy priest that have like ELEVEN big cooldowns…? What?
And even the classic tree…was the illusion of choice. Also lots of it passive. PVE or PVP. Passive to reduce a CD? Yes please.
Some will argue they had hybrids. Okay…you still loaded up tree to get final talents on the tree for spec. Last 2ish rows were usually the class spec defining good ones.
If one wants to have the illusion what they did in holy or prot tree for the points later expacs had as a ret based paladin and was never done before, sure okay.
And even some of these hybrids were niche. Preg paladin was good in some things. Arena mostly. Not so good in others.
Also a picky gear need to make it work for many. Tree variety worked…if RNG said so lol.
IF pug RNG hated you (being nice removing the ninjya’s even), or like 7th on the ML list…well I hope you have some gold for the gdkp. Otherwise you run the other cookie cutter build out there till you have the gear to run preg.
Fun fact: Talent trees are almost always pointless, particularly in MMOs. There is always a mathematically superior build that everyone always chooses. Sure, you can choose something else, but most of the time that just ends up boiling down to either trading away effectiveness for a slightly easier rotation, or pretty much deliberately gimping yourself for no real benefit.
It’s good to have a talent tree, as it gives the illusion of choice as well as giving a sense of progression. It just isn’t that special.
The only time i would say a talent tree matters is when no matter what you choose, you’re going to be stupidly strong, it just determines in what style your stupidly strong gameplay will turn out to be. This mostly is in singleplayer games, in my experience. For example, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, where you’re a blank slate that’s going to inevitably end up incredibly OP with a big weapon, little sneaky weapons, a bow, magic, or a combination of those, based entirely on how you set your talents
unless you can get everything in a skill tree there always worthless, being people will just find the meta build(s) and then everyone will stick with them
The only illusion here is the illusion of intelligence. People like you who think you “figured out” that you don’t really have an option because one build will be the “best” confusing narrow-mindedness with enlightenment.
During WotLK years ago, I had a particular build that I liked to play as a feral druid. Instead of the cookie cutter Master Shapeshifter investment in the Resto tree, I preferred to take King of the Jungle for the bonus damage on enrage and the utility of energy restoration on Tiger’s Fury. I was turned down by a raiding guild to be a member because I didn’t take the cookie cutter build. Turns out, TF now has the energy restoration baked into it. Blizzard decided that the utility of that talent is important and/or fun enough to make it baseline even if it wasn’t “optimal.” So what I had been using was actually something the game’s developers decided we should actually have. So GTFO of here with this nonsense. There’s no iLlUsIoN, just delusion. Tons of deluded people who don’t realize, sometimes you can have fun things and that in of itself is what allows experimentation and creativity to grow even if it isn’t what’s most optimal.
Same can be said with everyone else here. They’re all fine with the same cookie-cutter builds and lack of flexibility and customization.
It’s not the meta players who are the loudest whiners about button bloat, it’s the militant bad players who think that Vanilla wow class design was too complicated.
Sorey to tell you this but Blizzard baking something into your kit doesn’t mean that thing was valuable as a talent. Theoretically every talent has value and would make you stronger if you take it. There have been rare exceptions where a talent negatively affected your performance, but ignoring those, if you could take every talent you would. But that doesn’t mean said talent is worthwhile as a choice.
The energy regen on Tiger’s Fury is indeed a valuable quality of life feature, and it’s good that it’s been baked into your kit. But way back in WotLK, taking a small quality of life talent at the cost of another talent that offers much more throughput is just unecessarily gimping yourself.
Feel free to experiment to your heart’s content. I can’t tell you what to do. But there’s absolutely no denying that this game has been figured out, and every class has an optimal talent build for every encounter.
I will give talent trees one thing in that there’s usually a slightly less than optimal alternative build you can use if you prefer, bht even they mostly use the exact same talents barring one or two points, and even they are figured out optimised builds that have been put through heavy testing, both simmed and live testing.
It’s WoW… each expansion either makes something good or bad.
and for that…there was always the option of make your own group.
where this really got funny. even hybrid players…like meta. Only the say 4 groups starters could be “misfit” hybrid. They wanted cookie cutter in the tank slots. healz. and other dps too.
Not judging…some wrath content if your choice was cookie cutter paladin the raid was meant for them it seemed.
Or the tank was the warrior going I will not be labelled. I am more than arm. I am more than prot. I…am…Parm. Or I am Armrot. we can pick funny mash up names later.
Yeah, it wasn’t a choice. You’d take boring paladin. 24 other people don’t want to be there 30 wipes later going this will work…on try 31. We are sure of it. Kind of…maybe.
If taking that choice I’d say wth, lets go full bore on this. shaman…you tank. It make it interesting.
talents are sick af and seem pretty much the opposite of pointless!
Realistically it doesn’t matter what the talent trees have on them 99% of people go to their favourite this is how you do it website and use the cookie cutter builds, its an illusion of choice…
“we want to be able to chose abilities the tress are too dumbed down”- goes to icy veins to get the new cookie cutter build…
Thats just what will always happen in games with any sorta content that is challenging.
“Hybrid” non-cookie cutter talent builds only worked previously because the content wasnt challenging.
That’s my take.
I don’t know how OP can call talents borrowed power when they’re literally being expanded upon in a few months.
The new talent system is vastly superior to the old.