My overall sentiment is that there were missed opportunities across all classes to add meaningful visuals to Hero Talent Trees to feed into their advertised purpose of enhanced class fantasy.
With Class Halls, class mounts, and spec weapons a thing of beloved Legion’s past, how can we get back some of that class identity visually?
Better Hero Talent visuals or changes?
Class-exclusive barbershop customizations?
A new type of back/shoulder/chest/face/etc. cosmetic?
Something else?
We have seen the discrepancy between certain classes who got notable, dramatic visual effects (Sunfury Mage, Dark Ranger Hunter, Diabolist Warlock, to name a few who got unique spawns and spell effects). And then there are others, (Demon Hunter, Rogues, Evokers, etc.) who got maybe one little visual spell effect for a proc or enhanced spell. Some Hero Talent trees don’t really add anything different to the class at all, or have no real defined fantasy (yes, I’m looking at DH and Rogue again).
I personally would have liked to see DH metamorphosis customizations or a new look for Fel-Scarred, as it is centered around metamorphosis. For rogue, I would have liked some better exploration of Shadow magic and rogue identity that was added to subtlety back in Legion. What even is the trickster hero tree? There’s just nothing going on there at all.
Looking forward to seeing other cool ideas and thoughts.
Wait, Dark Ranger got notable, dramatic visual effects? They must have updated them since I last looked. Though what they had was still an improvement over Pack Leader, which you can identify by its apparent lack of a hero spec.
I wish Shaman’s Ascendance didn’t transform the player into whatever that… thing is. Something similar to Fire Mage’s Combustion would be nice, but they also had a Glyph a few expansions ago that turned it into the Monk’s Storm, Earth, and Fire based on whatever spec you were.
I got sick of green fire on my Warlock, so an option to make Chaos Bolt orange or purple would be kind of cool.
Warrior is getting a bunch of cool storm visuals with Mountain Thane, so that’s nice.
More holy or shadow visual options for Priests. I’m a big fan of Discipline’s visuals, but I’ve never really liked playing healer roles.
I’m with you on this, something to make up for the lack of “Blood Knight” vengeance paladin/not-so-holy paladin fantasy that was present with the Blood Elves in TBC. They never went anywhere fun with that in terms of visual effects or consequences for being a pally that stole your Light source. All you got was a tabard and you could get that shield and all that. I did enjoy the gameplay of tanking as a pally many years ago but the class fantasy of light-loving junky gold flashing everywhere turalyon vibes was just not it.
I wanted a shadow priest hero talent with focus more on Auspicious Spirits so I could pretend to be an Auchenai Soulpriest again, but instead we got one based on Halo. Did anyone ever even like Halo?
Reading comprehension test: “to name a few who got unique spawns and spell effects”
Dark Ranger:
Completely new spell effect of Shadow magic as a hunter with Black Arrow, and it’s actually a new button to press.
Shadow Hounds, a unique spawned pet model to the hero tree that other hunters cannot tame.
On top of already having the unique barbershop customization in game.
Let’s take two of the rogue specs subtlety rogue got for hero talent trees.
Deathstalker: When you use your normal generator ability from stealth, extra purple stuff appears for a fraction of a second.
Trickster: When unseen blade procs at random, a yellow slash will appear for a fraction of a second.
Compared to that, among many other Hero Talent trees that have similar paltry milisecond spell effects on random procs or existing button presses, yes, Dark Ranger got notable, noticeable, new effects that give it identity and flair. Could it be better, sure. All of them could. But it is on the top with the others I mentioned where Sunfury gets flaming balls and a phoenix spawn and Diabolist gets pit lord spawns. Same thing. Slowly dismount your high horse.
