I had doubts about it start, and this confirms it : Hero talents are just normal talents with some sparkles, named “hero” just to think you’re cool.
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Smells a bit like the Cataclysm class additions. In WotLK the classes were mostly fleshed out, so Cataclysm just added extra juice, so to speak.
And this feels a bit the same, just glancing over it. The specs seem to have what they ought to have for their roles today. So the hero talents just add extra juice. More power, more convenience, more utility, more support, more…
Evergreen system? Again, like Cataclysm, one has to wonder what the long-term thinking is here. Because if this is the addition for The War Within, what are they going to add ~15 months later in Midnight, and ~15 months later in The Last Titan?
Smells a little bit like power creep and homogenization.
Lots of extra bells and whistles, but what’s the impact on gameplay? Everyone becomes a one-man army, so how does Blizzard challenge a 5man Dungeon group with a San’layn Death Knight tank that is all but unkillable? One-shots?
Feels like they use the opportunity to turn more specs into Augmentation support specs as well, so there are some more options to choose from there as well.
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I have to say, i’m somewhat disappointed, only the warrior perks seemed interesting.
The others were kinda boring to me.
I’m hoping for things like:
s4 shadowlands enhance set, s3 dragonflight enhance set, wake of ashes reset, better divine purpose/empyrean power, things like that.
And this mostly just doesn’t deliver.
You can do better than this. It’s just not very interesting.
Well most likely it’s going to end up defining a certain hero spec as meta 
so all our hypes can be toss down the drain lol.
Who cares about that.
There is always a meta spec, what actually matters is whether the gameplay is improved or not.
Yea a certain combination of talents will always be better. I don’t get people who complain about this, it’s just math.
Yea if they are relatively close it’s better, but then people still complain, even if the option you wanna play is just 5% behind.
This.
I think Blizzard is repeating history by adding too much stuff, just for the sake of having some new features to sell.
- It’s going to further increase class complexity, which is already too high for most of the specs in the game.
- It’s going to make the game even harder to balance.
- It’s going to be an illusion of choice as always. Players just want to play the game and not get screwed by some sub-optimal choice, so they’ll copy-paste a build from Wowhead or their class Discord.
I think it would be better of these hero talents weren’t actual talents, but purely cosmetic changes to existing abilities.
1 Like
Creating a game that presents mechanical diversity while keeping a numerical balance within 0.5% is an unattainable goal. The variations in encounter difficulties, talents, and gear will always cause discrepancies that could differ by several levels of magnitude. Consequently, it’s inevitable to have niche classes and specs in any such game, or classes that outperform the others. The straightforward solution is to play what you enjoy and make friends who share your interests.
2 Likes
I’m not entirely sold on the idea of this hero talent tree nudging your main spec towards one of the other two specs. While it could be beneficial, I’m concerned it might make the optimal choice too apparent.
Personally, I’d prefer a system that allows for more individual playstyle customization rather than pushing us towards what’s deemed the “best.” Maybe even having the flexibility to pick talents more freely within the talent tree would be a more appealing option for me.
2 Likes
Lightsmith looks boring and unimaginative to me.
Why not give homage to 1H + Shield dps paladin like in D2 spamming hammer of wrath with wee hammers spiralling outwards along with a circle of divine hammers?
That vs the 2H Ret we know and love as options of playstyle, and then just fix the existing abilities so as to not simply have to choose between ST and AOE sacrificing one or the other per encounter?
We literally have two core abilities that you should be choosing for each damage scenario anyway (templar and storm).
I’d like to have the options of:
1H + Shield or 2H Ret
Divine Hammers with both ret and prot style hammer spinning round you and alos outwards versus the current consecration playstile where blade puts it at target location
I’d also like to see cosmetically spme more choices like a higher res 4 wing Crusader Wings that are as small and dainty as the original. Maybe some void options for those with nzoths goft still or a nod to Anduins recent struggles. Maybe make the Hammers moggable to yoir weapon? Or consecration to take on a few different patterns etc (warlock fire colour looking at you).
Theres 6 different options right there for a fair bit of interchangeable flavour and gameplay without too much strain to balance i’d like to think.
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With Death Knight Unholy im worried about action and maintenance bloat.
Were already a complex multi area focus class to play with significant maintance managment of resources (Buffs, Debuffs, minions, Power, Runes, CDs).
Our opener is bloated, our ‘maintance’ complex and lackluster then our burst which, while fun, is action swamped.
Can we have a small bit of Disc Priest treatment and have some abilities as passive or a general rework to reduce bloat and then look at adding more aspects.
I.e. how about having Scourge strike apply desieses aswell rsther than it being a seperate action. - things like this to make the class less button pushy, less maintance and more fun in general?
A vampire DK is great but how about we bring back presence?
Blood presence could have 2 modes using Hero tree - Tank mode (increase HP of allies) - DPS mode (Increase leach of raid by X)
Frost prescence Tank Mode - Reduce damage taken by X OR reduce movement imparing effects by 50% - DPS mode - Add frost damage to attacks of raid.
Unholy prescence Tank mode - When you use Anti magic shell, apply to closest 2 allies also. DPS mode - When an ally dies, respawn them as a ghoul (10 seconds) and grant raid x haste.
^ just random ideas that could be part of Hero talent tree instead of adding more bloat
No ‘Pack Leader’ info, so no interest.
This is not good. Keep hero talents purely cosmetic. This is just new talents… boring.
I disagree on that. Balancing numbers is a mathematical process and those can be calculated.
I think the reason balance is hard to obtain is because their damage formula is not streamlined throughout all classes.
This seems most evident when comparing casters to melee.
They’d need a team of mathematicians to create actual numeric balance which is probably a bridge too far, but I wouldn’t say it impossible to achieve.
The news bot is a bit over excited to share, but staff usually remove a duplicate pretty quickly.
Sure, they remove it. But it’s been literal years now. How is that still a thing?
I’d like to echo the post https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/get-an-early-look-at-hero-talents-in-the-war-within/1745496/263
Given by a US player.
It would be amazing if these Hero talents were more of a flavour/colour/visual change to the classes rather than “add more buttons to push”.
The few classes I main, already feel like we have too much useful stuff to press.
If I have to add 1-2 more buttons to my already bloated rotation… well I’ll be out of Keybinds… I get RSI from enhancement shaman… I don’t need MORE buttons to press.
We will be back to the “WOD pruning time” in a couple of expansions…
Although for a DK I can understand how “make all spells blood colour” would be cool. I don’t know how a Totemic flavour change would look. Shamans (apart from Resto) barely use totems now. So flavour for a totemic is limited… Adding a spell to drop a totem as a totemic Hero talent would work I guess… But where do we fit it in the rotations? Maybe instead it’s a “replace X core spell”. Of course, this is an example for general consideration not just for shamans.
I think a good way to look at it is, a replacement of existing spells or enhancement of them. Rather than add more buttons… Or at least minimise which classes get more buttons and which just get an enhanced or flavour-changed spell… (some classes may have less to press). To globally keep away from bloat.
- Upon further look at the example Hero trees most fit into the “Enhance X spell” but then we need to start tracking more additional buffs on top of our already busy rotations. So, again maybe it’s a better approach to “replace X spell effect with a Hero talent”.
Just spitballing
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I completely disagree with this guy. It should have gameplay impact. I don’t wanna play the same stuff for years. Blizzard said they announce pruning and this is nice. I think this stuff like Hero Specs is something we are gonna see every expansion, because blizzard simply doesn’t wanna bore us. There will always be something meta. Mostly it’s a skill issue though, because who is gonna check whether you use the correct hero spec? → Absolutely nobody, unless you underperform.
I am not advocating for a complete “don’t add anything” stance. I’m just worried for the below scenario to occur again since it happened before and felt bad… at least to me.
Keep it new by adding more spells and effects. Ok cool, that’s fine…
So e.g. you take the 10-button rotation we already have and dumb 2-5 more spells to it… Players get used to it. Dump more spells next expansion.
Boom! Pruning time in 2030 they remove half the stuff we got used to pressing over the years. Some are happy, some are sad, the class feels boring, hunters lose their cool pet spells… Enhancement Shaman is a perfect example of this. At one point I think in BFA our spec was a shell of its former glory and was super boring.
As opposed to now DF Shamans overall feel super good I think in all specs and the class fantasy is strong. They have variations in specs and choices. If we go through another set of bloat or pruning, it feels super bad to go back to some proto-shaman or a completely new version which has questionable class fantasy… all I’m trying to propose here. Retain class fantasy instead of frontloading each spec for each expansion with a ton of new abilities.
The tier sets are an awesome way to spice up the existing talents. Hero talents should follow the same ideology, in my opinion.
EDIT: Upon further consideration, I can see how adding a new fresh spell is a good thing.
Just want devs to be careful of bloating or barring old play styles completely…
Originally I thought Imma be a Templar. But I guess Lightsmith is exactly what I was hoping for 