Talent trees offer players a system to master. They’re great for experimenting with different builds and trying things out to suit your own play style. And people are going to make a comment about cookie cutter builds and while it’s true that there are talents that are “must haves” there’s a lot of talents that are situational and there are even entire builds that are situational.
Here are a few builds just for example.
Fury Prot hybrid for high threat generation
Mage AoE farming builds
Survivability/damage focused builds
Survivability/PvP focused builds
PvP/Damage focused builds (with less focus on survivability)
Pure damage builds
So, instead of Warfronts, Garrisons, Mission Tables, or Torghast. How about we just get more character customization in the form of talent trees?
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Feels like the weapons in Legion were the best chance at getting back to a version of them but we threw them at a giant sword to heal Azeroth…
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The must haves are built into classes now and only impactful talents remain.
Only reason anyone missed the talent trees is cuz in their head they were gonna be able to select “that one talent in the other tree”
But blizz changes classes every xpac now so it wouldn’t matter
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god I hope not, there was never really any viable customization stop pretending there was.
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Nostalgia is a dangerous thing.
lmao.
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Come over to the TBC Classic servers… we have builds for days!
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Probably not. Another issue with old trees is half the talents were filler stat bonuses to take up space. Not really that inspiring or interesting. The talent system we have now is basically that pointless filler cut out and kept the handful of actually impactful talents.
Not that they can’t reinvision a new talent tree, like what artifact weapons did. But it’s been nine years now and the answer’s so far been no on a system revamp. It’s not an impossible chance, but it’s not likely at the moment.
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Hmmmm I dunno but I think it COULD be coming depending on the expansion
To be clear, I’m not against a larger tree.
The preferable change I would like to see is simply keeping the tree we have now.
Then have 2 columns to the right and left of each talent row, extending in branches with 10 options for small and minor choices. Give each talent row 5 points to spend, that can be spent on any of the sets of minor choices across all the trees.
But seriously, the talents right now, are much more impactful and customizable for different viable builds then the old tree ever was.
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If Blizz brings back talent trees I’m going to guess there would be unrest in the community because when they removed talent trees they baked some of the stuff into the classes baseline + part of abilities. When they add trees back they are going to remove that stuff they baked in and the argument will (rightfully) be “Blizz is taking away stuff I already had and making me jump through hoops to get back to the point I was already at”.
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It would have to be the cata talent tree style 
Where all the filler is stripped and it’s a tree of effects but they’d have to make all new effects because removing our current effects to throw them on a tree sounds no bueno.
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Yeah, the appeal is in the tree itself. It’s up to the developers to add interesting talents into the trees. I know they aren’t for everyone, but that’s the thing. You can always go look up a decent build online and you’re going to perform well. But if you really want to push the limits of what your class can do talent trees are great for doing that. That’s how fury prot was born. Someone was having a hard time tanking and they said to themselves “Hmm…I wonder if I actually need all this mitigation. Maybe I can sacrifice some of it for more threat.” and they experimented. That’s the kind of system that’s interesting.
The current talent system has been in the game longer than the original talent trees. I doubt they will ever go back.
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You wouldn’t even need to do that these days 
An addon could be written to autospec you without you even having to notice.
If we get it, I’ll write it for you!
so, uh… someone is going to skip 5/5 shield block to put an extra 2 points into threat? or to put points into fury gen at the cost of less points in natural armor? unique builds seem fun but I can only imagine groups kicking players for not having a proper build.
I write all that kind of stuff myself lol.
I want to agree with this but does it happen now?
Though thinking that I have personally seen people be inspected after performing poorly, have certain things pointed out to them they are doing incorrectly and being yeeted from groups it isn’t common and I would guess it would be even less common with a larger number of options [talents] to choose from.
But as with the auto spec addon an addon could be written to score a players talent selection
I know players were afraid of being booted for being the wrong covenant, but I haven’t heard or seen it happen yet.
As for a talent build being non meta, who knows? This community can be toxic at times, so I wouldn’t want to test a mythic+ group with a unique build. Especially if it’s non optimal performance.
Funny you should say that because here is what 1 point in Improved Shield Block reads.
Allows your Shield Block ability to block an additional attack and increases the duration by 0.5 seconds.
Here’s what 3 points looks like
Allows your Shield Block ability to block an additional attack and increases the duration by 1.5 seconds.
You may look at that and say “I want my shield block maxed out” but I look at that and say “That first point has a ton of value and the next 2 give a lot less value”. This is where the fun is. What you say is a “unique” and “improper” build I say is simply a build that has more value than what you’re used to seeing.