From artifact relics, to azerite, to soulbinds - all these things share one common element that, really, shouldn’t exist.
They stop you from swapping specs.
Why? Why is it a problem if a mage decides he wants to bounce from arcane to frost to fire dungeon to dungeon, fight to fight? Why do we have to have this finite currency that only exists to stop us from experiencing our whole class? Can anyone make a convincing argument for this garbage that isn’t a tacit admission that it only exists to string people along longer?
Hi Rashiko, can you please provide a specific example? I am unaware of soulbinds et. al preventing someone from switching specs. I believe the design intention stated by Ion previously was that they wanted to present a “loadout” system so a player who wanted to respec could simply switch their soulbinds and such. Also, gear sets can be used to assist in utilizing the appropriate stats for whichever spec you utilize.
Do note that Blizzard staff reads the forums, so if there’s a specific example you can provide, that will likely be very helpful to them. The development team is doing a great job at class design and balance so if there’s any strange outliers occurring, I’m sure they’d like to know so they can keep everything in check
It’s because the game director only plays 1 class, 1 spec and only raids. He doesn’t want someone’s alt shaman’s resto offspec destroying him in raid for some reason.
I’ve always hated this garbage, but at least it’s a little better now that you can just assign one soulbind to each spec. Druids are the only ones that can’t really do that well, as they have 4 specs, 3 soulbinds.
But, in general, I hate all things gear and I find them just unnecessary grinds, especially for PvP.
I’m only quoting this poster because it fits the narrative that many players complain about.
Many people talk about WoW missing RPG aspects and wishing it had more. Many of those players wouldn’t be able to deal with most RPG’s and their systems. We have a couple of small systems implemented that we have to worry about in new content, none of those systems are complicating or in-depth… especially when compared to actual RPG’s.
Players rage about the game being streamlined but then players rage about a few very basic systems being implemented.
I find the systems, as implemented, to be quite healthy. They certainly add a lot of depth to the game and provide many different choices to support player agency. Ion and the devs did a terrific job with their system design in this expansion, and I hope to see continued in-depth systems that reward player agency as the game progresses on!
I want more soulbinds, four each that are BiS for each spec, two each for ST and two for AoE. I like what they were going for with spec-specific soulbinds, but as it is, my AoE tree is different than my ST tree for all three specs and five of the six set-ups that I use share a soulbind. I would like load-outs for soulbinds that automatically trigger when I respec, enter a raid, enter a dungeon, or enter an arena/bg and can be changed anywhere in the world.
I also think that conduit energy makes no sense from an RPG perspective because my gnome is smart. He kills titans and makes bombs in a matter of seconds. He should be able to learn a new conduit whenever he wants.
However, if soulbinds were removed entirely and the endgame was re-balanced around that, I suppose that would also solve my problem.
Don’t forget Human, alts can be utilized for separate spec usage. Human. Also the Conduit soul binds switch when you switch specs automatically I have found. /shrug
Ugh…Min/Maxers: the reason why you can’t have anything nice in an MMO, or do anything too wild with a build.
The talent system as it as existed since MoP was in response to try to discourage everyone from going with so called “cookie cutter” builds. Granted, I understand the logic behind the change. In order to play a spec in an optimal manner, your talent tree essentially HAD to be set to X/Y/Z and had a ton of stuff that just wasn’t really fun (0.1s reduced cooldown on my Fireball up to a max of 0.5s…yay…)
If you were lucky, MAYBE you had 3-5 points you could do whatever you wanted with, which has generally been in line with the 6-7 rows we’ve had for nearly a decade.
As much as I was a proponent of it for years, I realize now that it really didn’t fix a damn thing. Some choices are better for leveling, some are situational, but overall every spec seems to have several choices that’ll either gimp you if don’t take them, or are such no brainers that there isn’t any logical way someone wouldn’t take them, even without following a guide.
In hindsight, I think this might be why we keep winding up with borrowed power systems: they don’t want to admit that the MoP talent system hasn’t really worked out or resulted in the changes they wanted to see, and I’d have to assume it’s easier to do a borrowed power system with some overlap between everyone (and a few class exclusive things) that gets taken away and replaced expansion to expansion than it is to rebalance 36 talent trees.
I think the idea is for players to prioritize their specs and choose which they want to be #1, #2, etc in terms of power, rather than them all being on equal footing. Really just an extension of what was already there with needing to maintain different sets for different specs. Doesn’t necessarily work well in practice, but I can see why Blizz might want to pursue that sort of player decisionmaking.
