I feel like talent trees are just a way for Blizz to offer the illusion of choice. I mean, we all use our favorite site to copy the builds, and the talents. Seems to me trees are just a way to stick someone in a round room and tell them to stand in the corner.
Maybe they should just take the talents they already know we are going to use, and either make them passives or turn them into the baseline. Then with the non-passive abilities, make two columns like we had in Class Halls. We pick our preference between the left and the right, rather than 4-5 on each row we plan to ignore anyway.
Talent trees have never really been unique, unless you count Vanilla when you could “cross-spec” and ThottBot did not have a build that suited you. So let’s prune some stuff, eliminate the overly complicated trees, add in all the passives, and focus on something that matters, and that we might actually control. People are squawking about Hero talents anyway. Let’s rip it out.
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Sometimes I even switch PWB out for Luminous Barrier for parsing.
It’s the same as talent trees forever, regardless of what version we have
There is always an optimal choice
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Maybe not to you, but they certainly have for me after we came out of talent builds at the start of MoP.
There is also no “illusion”. Every build can work in some way, especially in open world content.
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Yeah, and if they made it baseline and removed the tree, we could stop griping about Hero talents. But hey, I’m just a guy with an opinion. Not like I work for them and could do it myself.
Blizzard has stats on which talent points are used most often in which forms of content.
I think we’d all be surprised at how few people just “copy and paste” their talent choices from popular websites online.
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I mean, you’re not wrong. The current talent trees’ are the illusion/trap of complexity. I believe the majority of talents are simple percent increase, cooldown reduction, or other passive benefits that don’t actually change the way skills function. If they baked all of those increases into the actual active (or gameplay changing) nodes, the trees would look like short lists rather than the sprawling branches they are now.
In other words, it looks complicated, and you can royally screw yourself by not picking up certain unassuming talents, but in reality the choices aren’t all that much more involved than they were during MOP. Add in “meta” and min-maxing and there’s little choice left at all.
That’s just my opinion though.
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No we don’t… i do my own trees, ma’am.
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Oh yeah, that one fight in that one place. Otherwise, there’s no real need to parse unless you are a min-max M+ lifer. Let’s face it. They know what the optimal build is. They created it. Why not just make it baseline and clear up the clutter?
Good thing you don’t, cause you stated you want raiding to be the only pillar of the game.
It’s sir, and you are one of maybe 20 people who do.
Absolute fact. The game was great, til they decided 5m timed dungeons were more important than 25m heroic raiding.
We can get rid of trees, when only the talents I personally like, make it through.
Ok?
I would disagree that they offer no choices as Ive had more different builds with them. But yes they still need to prune them, way too many buffs and debuffs. You shouldnt need weakauras to track any of those.
This is what I mean. We all use the better options. Might as well keep them and toss the rest.
We shouldn’t need add-ons at all. But the game design has always been wildly out of pocket. Even Ion himself had a screen filled with addons back in Vanilla. And yes, when the majority of the fight relies on WeakAuras to get through, there is a larger underlying issue.
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No, no we do not.
I use my own trash talents.
That’s cause you play a Blood Elf 
Well yeah, why would i not play a Blood Elf? It’s the best looking race.
I like the upgraded version, the void elf. Same great look, more polygons 