They feel a bit unncessary in the sense that they are a bunch of passive that will alter your rotation… slightiy.
I do not know why Blizzard is not going crazy with the class fantasy. For example, what is preventing Blizzard giving Destruction a new “Rain of Chaos” spell that rains multiple Infernals? Why not give Demonology new summons that interract with each other instead of making the spec an Imp Mother?
They spend time on really… unexciting stuff. I can not understand why.
When you pick a class, isn’t that player power tied to a cosmetic choice? When you pick a spec? Talents? How are hero talents any different? Would you say the same if Blizzard just added them as new talent rows?
Does anyone choose a talent for the way it looks? I honestly can’t say I’ve ever looked at talent trees that way. Talents have changed the way my spells work/look/do stuff in the past.
I think some people thought that it was essentially a cosmetic skin over your abilities, such as all your skills would be dark ranger-esque and we would have things like white light spells for druids and what not.
I thought it was a mesh of two specs into a new one with a few cosmetic spells enhanced.
What we have instead is seemingly a thematic name with 1 new ability that has a thematic appearance and talents that buff it.
I see, I just went from the examples they gave at BlizzCon.
Hero Talents are designed to more deeply explore class fantasy.
Hero Talents are completely flexible. They can be changed the same way as regular talents.
Hero Talents are spent with standard talent points, gained from leveling up.
Hero Talents will still offer choices in the form of choice nodes which appear in the standard talent trees.
Each specialization will have the choice between two hero talent trees, each being shared with one other spec.
There are 39 Hero Talent trees - one for each specialization of a class.
Hero Talent trees are generally designed around a certain few spells that fit a theme and empowering them.
Nothing there really screamed this is a customisation to me. It was more an extension of the talent trees. And like with other talents sometimes your visuals change a bit.
I guess it’s open to interpretation and that’s where some have felt disappointed.
But even if there’s a different looking skill; that’s all it is.
Do I wish hero talents were actually ‘class skins’? Yes.
Do I think for what the system is, it was poorly named? Yes.
But that doesn’t take away that I believe most people who are making a big deal out of this, are just doing it to complain; because it really isn’t a big deal.
Who cares if I shoot a red bolt or a blue bolt?
I think a lot of people care about these things. Like all these BM hunters that enter arena with pets that look cool, but are not the “correct” ones with healing taken debuff. People just like what they like.
It’s all mismanaged expectations. “We’ll give you a hero talent tree called Dark Ranger, but we’ve never promised you’d look like a dark ranger”. And players were “But, but… I want to BE dark ranger!” and Blizz “No, we never promised that at blizzcon or anywhere else - we said these will be JUST talents that will give some dark ranger flavor, but otherwise not much else will change”. And people got upset
Dark Ranger is something you can already RP in game. You can unlock the undead looking skin with red eyes and the outfit. It would have been pretty useless doing all that and then finding some talents could mimic it instead.
The name is just the theme of the abilities rather than changing your character.
However I imagine if you are big into your Dark Ranger RP then having the Dark Ranger Hero talents will be a bonus.
Of course; and I’m not denying that.
In fact, with the example you gave; that’s exactly one of the reasons why I, as a hunter player, want to get back the option to spec our pets. So we’re able to choose the ones we want like the look of and not suffer a hit to our performance or utility.
What I AM saying though is that the difference between (to keep your example going) a t-rex or a duck is a very big difference.
So it’s not really comparable with hero talents. If you want to make a more accurate comparison, you should say, for instance, the difference with someone using a grey wolf or a brown wolf (there’s a difference, but for a lot of people not a difference that’s really big or important).
I half agree. They should have never called this system ‘hero talents’ and they should have never picked those well known heroes from WC’s past to represent a few talents. Those were mistakes on their part.
But… Disregarding that for a moment: They were clear on what hero talents were (and weren’t) from the start. I’ve been saying since day 1 since they’ve announced this system that there’s a lot of people not getting what this system really is. And yes, now those people are upset, but it’s not entirely Blizzard’s fault; they should have paid attention to what they said at the Blizzcon deep dive, instead of going ‘omg omg I can be a dark ranger!!! zomg!!!’.
Yes, the system is badly named. For sure; it sets the wrong idea about it from the get-go.
But there’s also many players who just had their mind sets on something that this system never was and was never announced to be; and that part is on them.
Imo the best thing Blizzard could do is one of two things:
Keep the system pretty much as it is right now; remove the ‘altered skill graphics’ where applicable and call the system ‘bonus talents’ and just have ‘cross over names’ (for instance for hunter the bonus talents would be BM/MM, BM/SV and MM/SV).
No confusion; it’s clear what it is.
Keep the Hero part of the name and remove ‘talents’ and all the power from the system and make it completely cosmetic. Unlock new animations/graphics and even a unique transmog piece or customization option as a ‘capstone’ reward as you level up.
Call it ‘Path of the Hero’ or something. This would make it an entirely ‘fantasy thing’.
The second option, even though I personally would prefer it, is a LOT more work than the first one though; so realistically I think Blizzard should go with option 1.
I used to take the Totemic Mastery talent as it gave me totems on the ground next to me (as most Shaman totems are pretty much gone now). Although it wasn’t a bad talent so that helped. I doubt I’d have taken it if it sucked performance wise.
indeed.
They could have been Hybrid Talents or Blend Talents.
And more generic names should have been used. Stormbringer is fine and I might choose that. Totemic might be good too as I do miss old fashioned totems but I doubt we’re getting anything close to that so probably not.
It depends on the talent, and what I plan to do. But on my hunters I usually pick Murder of Crows for example, regardless of performance, because I think it’s a cool ability If it sucks, it doesn’t matter, as I only solo on them anyway.
they said these talents would add some new visual effect. so yes, they’re a hybrid
as i said above, the devs said there would be some new visual effects. Hearing that and seeing names like “Dark Ranger” made many think (not me) these new talents would be similar to class skins. They should have called them something else.
most specs don’t even have a tree yet. if they wanted, they could change them.
“working months and even years” only applies to zones and big features, not a bunch of passives
most people don’t consider a bunch of new talents the “central feature” of the new expansion. delves probably are
they don’t have to delay anything because they haven’t put any work on these talents
i don’t like them not because they’re not class skins. i don’t like them because i know these talents will cause a lot of drama (they’re already doing it) while blizzard tries in every possible way to make people like them before changing idea (already happened before) and also because the game doesn’t need more passives and modifiers: it’s getting hard to track everything, even with addons. also, i’m tired of having qol and talents being advertised as features
Adding a new visual effect does not make it cosmetic.
Choosing let’s say the shockwave talent, is giving you the visual of the shockwave, but it is a gameplay choice, not a cosmetic one.
A cosmetic choice is one that impact purely the visuals of the game (like tmog and green fire for locks).
Yeah and this is why developers are spamming that those are “just talents”, because people expect class skins, and they will be let down with those expectations.
By them not releasing all the trees does not mean they have not gone through months of internal iteration and brainstorming to prepare them. For each one of the trees they already have multiple versions at the same time in order to “settle” at the right one. They are not spending 2 weeks on each talent tree and presenting it to us, it is a cornerstone of the expansion.
Doesn’t matter what most people thing, what matter is what blizzard puts in the announcement, and for blizzard to use that they must feel it is pretty important.
Anyway from the rest of your post I just got that you do not like the concept of hero talents. I do not know many people that do not like the concept at all, but to each their own. I also do not think that blizzard will switch it now.
They already put out many trees with pretty positive feedback by the community at large, with the ones that got negative feedback being worked upon.
Also, the fact that you think that they did not put any work into those talent trees is beyond me. It was a central piece of their presentation in blizzcon and it is the 3rd feature of the expansion after delves and warbands. Just the time spent on this must have costed them millions in work hours in the current production pipeline.
There is 0% chance of the feature being removed at this point.
If it sucks, it doesn’t matter, as I only solo on them anyway.