An Amazing Talent Tree... maybe?

Community General Discussion
1

Quick reminder and/or myths about the talents trees first.

Old talents tree (prior to MOP) were :

  • Great! because they allowed you to create many differents builds for your characters, but
  • they were Bad because +1% crit… omg that’s boring.

New talents “trees” (beyond MOP) are :

  • Great! because no talent is boring (no +1% crit), but
  • they’re Bad because there’s much less choice and ultimately you’re forced into a particular gameplay depending on what you’re doing (mostly single target fight or AoE fight ?)

Ok, in reality, it’s not that simple. Even with old talents trees, there were cookie cutter builds that worked better than others and with new talents trees, there are still boring talents that do not change your gameplay that much.

Let me introduce you, for those who don’t know about this game, to the skill trees of Black Desert Online.
You can play with it a little bit here : https://bdocodex.com/us/skillbuilder
BDO has a lot of issues, it’s by no mean the perfect game. But I kinda like how the skill tree works and it just baffles me that it’s only now I realized how much WoW could benefit from this design.

Basically, in BDO, you unlock your abilities as you level up, pretty much like in world of warcraft. Then, there is these skill trees where you can spend skill points in order to :

  • buy new additional skills
  • improve already known skills

For world of warcraft, this could mean that you have a talent for most of your skills, and you can invest some talents points into improving or obtaining new skills.

For example, with feral druid, you could get something like that (unfinished of course) :
Imgur
Here we can see Rake, Rip, Primal Wrath, Ferocious Bite, Swipe and Brutal Slash.
The thing is: you really can’t have a strong Rip in SL, because we have primal wrath that applies rip on everything in range. So that would be really overpowered. That’s why we currently have this weird gameplay as feral where you must maintain rip while spamming as many FB as possible.

But, imagine that you’d have to invest these talents points into these skills, in a such way that you cannot max primal wrath and rip at the same time for example. Or that you cannot max Rip and Ferocious bite at the same time.
That would allow you to build your character in various ways: direct damage or bleed, for example.

Think about what that kind of design could do for your class.
You really love that particular ability or that particular gameplay but you’re currently forced into something else because the design of your class changed ?
With this idea, you still could play the way you really wanted to.

2

At this point, I’d rather they completely overhaul talents or get rid of them.

6 Likes
3

I wish they’d do something in between, old talent trees were exactly the same as now but more buttons to press to get there.

A talent tree like your pic but you picked conditionals could be interesting (or awful).

4

I think they removed the old talent trees because they thought it was too hard to balance qall the different builds, so I don’t see them bringing something like that in the game tbh.

5

The old talents had a huge minus as in you couldn’t change them in a rest area. That meant that if you did a few PvP matches and then a raid, you’d respec for both which cost a lot of gold. We got Dual Spec to ease multispeccing, but even then, there were talents that were a must-have in this content and meh for the other and if you needed vastly different builds for the sam raid’s fights, it still didn’t solve all problems.

6

Which isn’t necessarily exclusive to the old talent tree. What made them different was that you could branch out to your other specs and have a more hybrid approach.

Debatable but still an improvement.

Thinking back to the Wotlk talent trees you didn’t really had much more options… You sometimes had a few options worth taking but the must-have abilities & the talent requirement to unlock others made it a fairly rigid process.

I honesty don’t think there were that much more build variety than we currently have. Sure you could argue that people did try hybrid builds or used whatever they wanted but nothing stops you from ignoring the “bis talent builds” guides & make your own build…

There’s less possibilities now sure, but when you focus on what actually matters there mustn’t have been that many viable options.

While interesting I fear it wouldn’t really change much in the way people play the game, or at least beyond the casuals (who also blindly follow guides anyway). Unlike BDO we have the tools to tell how much dps we actually get from a minor stat upgrade, let alone find out the most efficient build.

This sounds like these talents will have a serious impact on your performances and that’s where we have a fairly big issue : A lot of options don’t really matter if there’s only a few viable ones.

We’ve seen what happens with covenants and how almost all the end-game focused players went for their spec’s BIS covenant (we’re talking about >90% iirc) and this was a far less important feature in the grand scheme of things than what you’re suggesting.

More options don’t necessarily mean better. I don’t really see how we won’t end up with but another kind of cookie cutter build with your suggestion.

1 Like
7

They should overhaul the current talent system or remove it, not make it even worse by re-adding the tree. Talent’s are garbage design anyway unless they somehow balanced them.

8

I resubbed one month specifically to reply to this, and because of legion timewalking.

This is something that i brought up at times, and i think that it’s a discussion that should be had, because when you actually look at it, talents are not that great.

What are the problems with it? Well some you already brought up yourself, many times there isn’t a real choice, you take this for aoe or that for st, or a talent is just straight superior, now you can say, well just balance them better, but the problem is that it’s basically impossible to do.

Also, for me talents give me a feeling that i am missing out on something that i would rather have baseline.

Let’s take for example thermal void, if i take that talent then i am missing out on a cool button called ray of frost, but if i take ray then i feel like i am missing out on thermal void etc…

So my suggestion is this, either remove talents, or make them either a complete overhaul of what a spec does that would be impossible to fit in the base rotation, something that fundamentally changes the gameplay like glacial spike, or just small perks that just add on top of something you already have, like splitting ice. And the core gameplay of the spec is baseline, so things like demonic, demonic appetite, ray of frost etc, are all baseline abilities.

Iv’e also tried bdo, i think the fact that you can increase the skill level of your skills is really cool, but takes way, waaaay to long, because it’s a korean mmo where grinding is pretty much most of what it has to offer, it’s a game with supremely nice gameplay, but close nothing else, i am definitely not opposed to adding something like that, but, and it’s a big but, you need to be eventually able to upgrade everything.

The reason why i liked artifacts so much has a lot to do with the fact that you could unlock everything eventually, if they made it a progression system instead of a borrowed power system and rolled the power upgrades after wod into that system it would have been way better than what we have now. It gives you a reason, and most importantly satisfaction into progressing your power, as long as it’s properly balanced and not too grindy, which is something they did not get right as they didn’t make artifact power account wide.

Effectively what the artifact system was is a old talent system but you can unlock everything eventually. They should have continued with it, and add on it patch to patch expansion to expansion and slowly build upon it, imagine how cool it would have been to get new traits, and new golden traits/special traits levels that actually have an impact on your rotation aside from just doing more damage. It would have been awesome.

So that’s what i think. I think talents are pretty much a relic of the past, something that instinctively feels good, but in reality it doesn’t play out as well as you hoped, because in the end you always feel like you are missing something, so let’s just cut the problem altogether and make either a talent system where your choice doesn’t have a big impact on your gameplay because everything gameplay related is either baseline or in a progression power system where you can unlock everything eventually, or you have a talent that completely changes the gameplay in a way that would not fit baseline, but honestly, you don’t really need a talent for that, as you can just make a toggleable ability, or just cut out talents all together and everything is either baseline or in the progression power system where you eventually unlock everything.

That’s it. The post is long so i don’t think a lot of people will read it, but i think it’s really important to get this right.

Another thing came to mind, remember relics in legion that would increase specific aspects of your rotation, like chaos strike deals more crit damage, or eye beam is stronger, to give some semblance of a choice just make that, you have your progression power system like artifacts, which provides the brunt of the character progression, and then you can have some small little adjustments, like you deal some more single target damage, because you took a perk that increases the damage of chaos strike, or you do some more aoe because you took something that increases your blade dance damage, you don’t miss out on anything, but you also have a small little choice where you can decide to do some more single target damage, or slightly higher aoe, or go for some more defense, etc… Just give an arbitrary number of points to allocate and that’s it, 10 or so would be best in my opinion, and no less than 5. And to get those extra points, well they could be either tied to a class/spec quest, or whatever honestly, they could even just give them to you, just don’t make it too grindy.

9

I think that’s a good thing, that’s the point of talents, to offer choices and making a choice means giving up something you want.

10

Well, i look it from a practical point of view.

In the end talents devolve into, you either take this for st or aoe, or something is just straight up better, and some of these talents provide traits that would fit perfectly as baseline abilities, but are talents and you are giving up something in order to have that choice.

So i would just remove talents or rework them the way i said in my post.

Look at bdo for example, pretty much everyone praise the gameplay of that game, yet there is no real choice, you just unlock abilities, because choice that comes at the expense of gameplay is not a good thing.

And personally i value gameplay higher than some nebulous choice. Which many times is just an illusion of choice.

So in the end it comes to, what do you personally value? I value gameplay over pretty much everything. If something comes at the expense of gameplay then it should be either reworked so it doesn’t, or removed.

11

I’ve seen this claim before but this was mainly valid in Legion, after that many talents were adjusted and moved around and now you usually have dedicated AOE rows or talents that do similar things.

This depends on the type of game, WoW always has been a game that offers a degree of character customization however i wouldn’t want this in Mortal Kombat for example.

12

Again, if the character customization comes at the expense of gameplay, then id rather not have it.

I’m a gameplay over anything person. Afterall that’s what matters in my opinion.

13

I’m not sure what you mean by “customization comes at the expense of gameplay”, is the example of missing out on a talent affecting your gameplay?

14

I literally explained everything in the post so i am not gonna explain myself again, if you still don’t get my argument then there is no point repeating it.

15

The closest thing to an argument in that wall of text makes me think you shouldn’t be playing RPGs.

16

All right, whatever you say. Have it your way.

In the end it still doesn’t change the fact that talents are mostly an illusion of choice, and your argument here doesn’t disprove anything, in the end we have different opinions, and value different things.

I think talents are pretty much a waste at the moment.

17

Some talents used to be baseline at some point in the spec history, so that’s why having those as talents kinda feels bad because I can end up not loosing a spell that used to be baseline. Among this, I can primarily think of rend for arms warrior, which was baseline for quite some time and is now a talent, sharing a row with massacre, allowing me to execute at 35% instead of 20%. It really feels bad to give up on a baseline spell so that I can execute at 35% more esp when I should have access to both.

I can also think of some talents that are being taken in many situation, like being picked at 100%, either passive or active talents. The prime example of this would be cataclysm for destro, which has never been baseline but I also think that spell should definetily be added to destro lock’s baseline kit, because that spell is just so good.

If a talent is being picked in every single scenario then it should be baselined, because that implies there are no other valid options, which ruins the argument of choice.

Don’t get me wrong, there should be choices, but sometimes, I feel like some of those should be given as baseline tools for the specs. Nerfing those talents should not be the way.

18

Oh god, personally i dislike dots that do nothing else than just damage.

It it were to become an enabler for another ability to do more damage, like a proc, fine, or have a chance to reset something good, but a dot as it is? Eh… It’s a pass for me.

For this reason i also disliked dots like enhancement flametongue in legion/bfa, unless you had hot hand talented, or corruption without nightfall. These passives would actually work more than fine as baseline, same for divine purpose and empyrean power. Or demonic and demonic appetite. Etc…

So this is basically the problem i have with talents, they lock gameplay behind a choice and sometimes it’s just impossible to get a combination that would be really good, or the combination is so bad that you are soft forced to take the other option if you wanna be optimal in any way shape or form.

So i would just cut the middle men, rework talents or remove them completely, progression instead comes from a progression system like artifacts, that is expanded little by little, patch to patch expansion to expansion.

19

That’s a really bad argument, first of all the classes received major changes throughout the years, some specs had their entire theme or toolkit revamped, this includes new abilities replacing the old ones, and that’s how they’re balanced. Also an ability being baseline doesn’t mean anything, rend has been a useless ability for years and not worth a spot on the action bar because it’s damage per rage cost was lower than literally anything else. They could have easily let that useless ability in the game and then add a talent that says “Increase rend damage by 300%” to compete with Massacre and it would have the exact same result.

Secondly many things were added to the game just later to realize that maybe it was too much, if a class has too much mobility then you could nerf it so you end up with several weak movement skills, remove one from the game or you could make it a talent and offer strong mobility as a choice in exchange for something else, like survivability. Which of these changes feels least bad?

That has to be the worst example you can pick, cataclysm isn’t that good and you don’t need it. The problem here is that the alternatives are bad, too specialized for AoE, making cataclysm the only choice for ST and general purse.
This example actually highlights the need for better alternatives, not that a talent is so integral to the spec that it can’t be passed up. There are actually few different reasons for why a talent is picked every time and for the overwhelming majority making it baseline isn’t the answer.
If you really want a prime example, take Shadow Embrace, has been a talent in BFA, people screamed to make it baseline because they used to have it, has been made baseline for Shadowlands, everyone hated it, now in 9.1 it was removed and put back into the talent tree, probably a place holder cause nobody uses it, Haunt is just better, most likely will get a revamp soon.

20

no they’re not, you just google what’s best and never press N again until next expansion, there is a reason why they removed them in the first place
I’m going to trigger so many people here
but the new ones are so much better for the end game , which is all of what the game is about nowadays, you switch them depending on which type of content you’re doing , and there are so many different builds you can play as, especially when you can play torghast and get two talents in a row, if you do all pvp , m+ and raiding , you probably have 3 different builds that you play
sometimes m+ alone has bis talents for tyrannical and fortified, and you may also change talents depending on which boss in the raid or which team comp you are playing against in arena

the thing is the old talent tree was designed for leveling purposes, you just use them to get baseline stuff, like your class doesn’t even work without the trees
and they are also obviously not designed around being switched from a time to time , which is why it costs an increasing amount of gold each time you want to change even one talent