Hey, hope you are all having a good day. English is not my first language, but I try to communicate adequately.
I feel like I am in need of other perspectives on the topic of the DF talent trees.
Because I have the impression that I am part of a minority that is not as happy with the rework. To me it looks like the talent trees rather create the illusion of choice. Please be aware that I have not observed every talent tree as good. I have also heard from the community that some are considered better designed than others.
On my troubled perspective specificly:
First of all, as has been said many times before, and you all know by now. In some cases many of your core abilities are in there that you will want to pick up again regardless. But I do not think these are the worst offenders. There are cases where you would only want to invest in ST abilities, not taking any AoE abilities that you were used to just having on your action bars in expansions before.
Second, the % throughput increase point sinkers. Why do I think these are point sinkers? In short: Classes are being tuned anyway (or so they said lol). They change nothing about the gameplay. if there are % throughput increases, there will be tuning elsewhere to compensate. You do not really expect them to let you outscale anything on your ālvlā, right? I see no good reason for their existence other than wellā¦ being mandatory point sinkers, because the developers might not have an idea of what to put in their place. I quietly hope these are only temporary, to be replaced in the future with something interesting, perhaps some utility or an element that alters gameplay.
Third, rotational maintenance talents: casting x or y ability applies a buff to self or debuff to target to do extra damage during the short (example: 4s) window that it is active. I do not like the dynamic of these, am I alone? My view on these is similar to the throughput increase nodes. If this is confusing, I do not mean cooldowns.
Fourth, the size of the talent trees. Why is it necessary to go back to ābigā talent trees? Is it not easier to balance smaller trees? To offer weightier choices? To have less pieces in a puzzle to think about and balance? The āoldā smaller talent trees were not considered balanced. Why not just try to rework them as they were, was the size of them really the problem? Why not try to rework some classes instead that have reported on being bugged or having poor gameplay for so long? But whatās done is done. And of course I want everyone to have a good time regardless.
Finally, some talents are still bugged on live and taking them can break interactions with other abilities, leaving a build in a broken state. Seems like a bit of a rushed release, no?
I hope I have been respectful to everyone with this topic, and thank you very much for hearing me out. What do you think about the new talent trees? Am I perhaps just a legally blind fool for its success?
2 Likes
I donāt care for talent trees. To me itās just a cookie cutter build, I go on a website and pick up the best build for M+ and Raiding, that have been worked out by far better players than myself.
The only thing that is easier this time is that I can literally copy and paste a string to populate it all for me.
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I tried that with shadow priest and got an error message stating itās an outdated string. 
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Itās a talent tree made for leveling in a game where leveling is irrelevant
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its a biiiig improvement guysā¦ there are actually different builds to run now. as for my priest which i have been leveling i see alot of different kind of ways to play the specs.
but ye ofc if you cba reading anything and just instantly search for best spec on google, then there will never be a system in any game that can satisfy you.
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Thatās very subjective.
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How so? Unless you lock your exp it is impossible not hitting max lvl in a shorter and shorter amount of time.
I donāt think itās all that different from the old talent system.
The underlying class design is the same as always. You get 99% of your class by default, and then the talent system allows you to customize the remaining 1%.
Blizzardās predecessor to WoW and its talent trees was Diablo II. And in Diablo II you get 1% of your class by default and then the talent system allows you to customize the remaining 99%.
Design-wise WoW is a game where two Survival Hunters are 99% the same. The talent trees donāt change that very much.
All that being said, I do think talent trees are cooler than talent systems. Theyāre more fitting for the genre, somehow.
Taking a shorter time makes it irrelevant? I donāt agree with that.
Itās very relevant as far as Iām concerned. And often itās the part of an expansion that I enjoy the most. Butā¦ Thatās of course subjective as well.
You can have your opinion about it being irrelevant, thatās fine. But then you should refrain from using statements that make it come off as āfactā.
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In the context of talents (which this topic is about btw), leveling is irrelevant. You leveling 50 characters is another thing entirely.
Iāve been leveling a kul tiran priest for the last achievement and a level takes between 2-15 minutes. Itās not a subjective opinion that this talent tree is nice for leveling but when a level takes 5 minutes it doesnāt really get to shine.
this was done for one very good reason, the idea is for them to exist for all players, some players are going to be leveling characters and they will be learning their core abilities as they level up, rather than a new player getting a while bunch of spells dumped in their lap and not knowing what to do with any of them.
reworking specs is a massive undertaking that can take a lot more time than creating these talent trees as well as the posibility of making a spec someone has played for years something that they no longer like meaning they feel forced into changing to another class/spec without it being their own choice.
there are hundreds of posts that i have seen over the years of people complaining about the rework that demonology warlock got as a good example, they stripped most stuff away to create the demon hunter class and left us with what we have no for the most part, after it got some changes after legion at least. some people really want the old version back, some people are happy with how it is in its current form
You get talent points BY leveling.
How is that irrelevant?!
Well, thereās buffs active that make you level faster at the moment. Those are not permanent.
Also; 5 mins is not by any means ānormal leveling speedā and should be considered hyperbole.
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But you dont get even your baseline interupt withoit the talents.
The class at base has nothing anymore as litterally sverythings in the talent trees now
Hello, I have a big request for you. Is it possible to return Mindsear spell for priest discipline and talent for 4 bolt in penance spell?
Please, please <3
Because time spent not at max level is magnitudes shorter than time spent at max level. Sure we have the 50% buff right now but it still wonāt take more than 20 hours /played to hit 60 even without it.
I didnt even look at trees yet - just imported some rubbish trees from somewhere, who knew
I found talent for 4 bolts for Penance its Castigation, but Mindsear is only for shadow priest now 
Im very sad.
At first. There a lot of different situations on different specs. You can use basic builds from Blizz or guide sites in every situation (m+/raid).
Second: if your specialization allows it, you can trade off utility for damage and vice versa. For example, you donāt need [Scare Beast] on your hunter in most situations, but itās very useful in Iron Docks (catty guy), so you can trade it with another cc or some crit chance or something else if your party already have incap or take it if party havenāt it. Same with [Misdirection] or [Tricks of the Trade] of something like this.
There are specializations that have non-obvious choices from the utility, different versions of which are good in different cases, and this can change the gameplay a lot.
Of course, there are specs that donāt, and they only have one path.
Considering the effort the devs must have put into this new semi-tree design, you are being very ungrateful. Like it or not, is another matter.
It is supposed to give you a lot of playstyle choices.
Agreed. There is a BIG flaw where your tree ārootā (or roots) require a skill point to activate. Eg āIgnore Painā. It is obligatory to take this because without it your whole tree is switched off. So why even bother to display it and present it as a āchoiceā?
On some trees it comes preselected, on others you got to click on it.
Copying 7 talent rows was actually easier for me 
Here, you have some 50 points to spend.
That too, if your desired build is outdated youāre in for some trouble.
Exactly, some players, including a friend of mine, are happy to be leveling again.
We get a stacking Holy Nova buff instead, but agree, Iād be glad if I could sear as disc again. Range is just much safer, saying this as a holy main.
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