Like, you could use the talent system to make a build that has as many active abilities as your class offers… but you do 0 damage that way. In order for you to do actual damage / healing / whatever, you have to run 3 abilities and 18 passives boosting their damage.
You’re basically prevented from designing your class in a way that’s fun for you, and instead pigeon-holed into like two builds that people will math out – and these builds are usually 2-3 buttons and very low effort / thought.
Why is this the case? I thought talents were supposed to allow customized gameplay.
So what exactly is the issue?
If you pick a talent that makes X spell deal 20% more damage, it’s still X spell dealing the damage. You’re phrasing it as if the damage is coming from auto attacks or idling.
Just because a talent is passive doesn’t mean it isn’t interactive. Most of the interactions are from passive talents.
Because passives are literally the BEST thing any game can give you.
Most people don’t want to micromanage every little thing and have 500 buttons to press.
You are aware of the difference between a passive and a passive that is the result of an active action, yes?
Type 1: Idol of Cthun Approximately [2 + Haste] procs per minute Mind Flay, Mind Spike, and Void Torrent have a chance to spawn a Void Tendril that channels Mind Flay or Void Lasher that channels Mind Sear at your target.
Type 2: Shadowy Apparitions Mind Blast, Devouring Plague, and Void Bolt conjure Shadowy Apparitions that float towards all targets afflicted by your Vampiric Touch for (29.5962% of Spell power) Shadow damage. Critical strikes increase the damage by 100%.
While these are both technically passive, Type 1 is of flat value regardless of how many of each spell you cast, and type 2 is a direct extension of your active spell casting and ability to play your spec.
Regardless your assertion that specs are simply “Random uncontrollable damage” is completely unfounded.
I’d love to understand your thought process that lead you to this conclusion, if only to marvel at how impressive a wrong turn you have made.
Out of curiosity imma just take one of my recent Rik Reverb kills and break down every ability I used. Shadow Priest: Archon.
Mind Flay Insanity 15.69%: Actively casted spell
Psychic Link 13.63%: Type 2 Passive (Directly correlates to my damaging ability casts)
Devouring Plague 12.34%: Active spell
Shadowy Apparition 10.40%: Type 2 Passive
Void Bolt 8.36%: Active Spell
Mind Blast 7.54%: Active Spell
Halo 6.43%: Active Spell
Vampiric Touch 4.81%: Active Spell
Shadow Word: Pain 4.64%: Active Spell
Thing from Beyond 4.61%: Type 2 Passive
Idol of Cthun 2.61: Type 1 Passive (Our First One!)
Mind Flay 0.92%: Active Spell
Shadow Word: Death 0.80%: Active Spell
Shadow Crash 0.55%: Active Spell
Vile Contamination 0.31%: Type 1 Passive (Weapon Cantrip Effect)
Authority of Radiant Power 0.25%: Type 1 Passive (Weapon Enchant)
Shadowfiend 0.19: Active Spell
Void Eruption 0.16% Active Spell
Shadow Weaving 0.12%: Type 2 Passive
Eye of Kezan 0.08%: Type 1 Passive (Trinket Proc)
Cyrce’s Circlet 0.02%: Type 1 Passive (Someone else’s passive ring proc attributed to me)
A grand total of 3.27% of my total overall damage was not related to an ability cast within my control, and of that only 2.61% of that came from my spec or class abilities. The rest were items.
Passives are a defense against “button bloat”. You still have choices only it is which buttons you want. When you decide you buff them up with passives.
Like, look at enhance for example. I have all these buttons that do a lot of damage, I have maelstrom stacks, I have primordial storm, etc.
… but I ignore all of that to spam Lava Lash because it has so many passives tied up with it that it out damages everything else. And even without Lava Lash, my mastery is half pointless because Storm Strike does no damage, even with talents buffing its damage, and you instead focus on procing wolves and spamming lightning bolt.
Look at ret pally. Everything you do is irrelevant, as 80% of your damage comes from Empyrean Hammer (which is a passive), and you could do everything wrong, but so long as you keep that passive up you purple parse.
Things like Soul Fire, Dimensional Portal and etc on Destro are a DPS loss, even if you take talents to buff them up, as you get more damage from passives tied to chaos bolt or rain of fire.
Every class is like, designed to revolve around two buttons, and trying to do anything else is a massive DPS loss. Like I just changed my enhance shammy build from one I actually enjoy playing to the “proper” one, and even though it’s massively easier, slower paced and I’m hardly doing anything, it’s a 500k DPS increase (at 642 ilvl). Because I take passives to buff surging totem.
I want a class where the buttons themselves are meaningful, and using them properly is how you do damage. Not because you stacked 18 passives on one button.