I agree.
That’s why it’s good that those systems are finally going away.
You level up and then you start working on getting your gear, just as it used to be prior to legion.
After 6 years I can finally start playing alts as I used to.
And since there is no borrowed power system this time those devs can put their time into the talent trees.
So now we just need players to give constructive feedback about these talent trees and suggest improvements.
Or we don’t, see what we get and then complain for another two years.
But if there is a time to shoot your shots it’s this time after the failure of shadowlands, the scandals and shift in management.
No, they do not provide more. You even show in your argument that you selectively leave out all the stuff we’re losing in order to get your argument through, when that is not the case.
Maybe the system will be better. If anything, I hope you are right! Nothing would make me happier, believe me.
But I have not once over the past 8 years been wrong about the game design and its pitfalls- Which, is not surprising because the devs are also the same and they have been lead by the same people.
I did provide those examples and I did do the calculations, you just selectively pick what points serve your argument and leave out those that do not.
I don’t think you are leaving the convo because you are tired, you were able to keep going back and forth for 4 days, after all. Instead, you ran out of arguments and instead of admitting you’re wrong you resorted to insults because you got caught. Thats the truth.
Of course it adds to the conversation. When this company and these devs have been lying to us for the past 8 years, claiming they listen but then ignore what we ask for, it’d be insane not to scrutinize them for that.
They got nobody else to blame for that but themselves. And so far, I haven’t seen any of the supposed humility. I haven’t seen them once apologize for their mistakes.
I do agree with some of your points however, but I disagree with others.
I think a more hourglass approach to the spec talent trees would be way better than the current iteration. This is because currently, the arrowhead approach more or less forces / entices you to olay yoyr spec exactly as it does now, you just pick which parts you like most.
The hourglass design would allow you to hopefully build things as you explained yourself. You want your warrior to be all about big hits and crits? Good, there exists a path for that. You want a more consistent damage build with higher uptime? No problem, you can have that too.
What I disagree with you is re: What abilities should and should not be baseline. Blizzard has only themselves to vlame why every class has a major cooldown, mobility etc, some obviously way more than others, because that is how the game is designed.
Do you think it is a coincidence that the last 2 added and now with evoker to be added classes are all hypermobile? No. That has been a conscious choice from their end. The game is infinitely more mobile than it was in 2004, for better or for worse.
Encounters, pvp and even just questing is built around that feature. And others, like lining up cooldowns etc (which I think is particularly degenerate). But you can’t fix that problem by just saying and deciding that “ah, these classes no longer have x thing because we want them to be different”, no.
You have to redesign the whole game if you do that. Encounters that prioritize good placement over movement, more mechanics that affect everyone regardless of movement, longer boss encounters with fewer burst windows, etc.
And that is hard. Because once you let that genie out of the bottle, its hard putting it back in.
I also do not think that adding “increases x ability by y amount, rank 1 and 2” talents are very interesting and I would rather they just merged them into one, removed them, or replaced them with something more interesting.
And also for the love of god, give us new abilities! Awesome, cool, new class/spec specific abilities and talents we have never seen before!
I picked out what i had on live on my druid, that way you see exactly what you lose and what you gain.
If i had picked other stuff up, i’d have had a longer list of stuff i lost, but an even longer list of stuff i’d gained.
You didn’t provide crap, where is the direct comparison like i did?
That’s the only way to see what you lose and what you gain.
There’s no need to argument when i showed exactly what is gained and what is lost.
And it’s win big time for the Feral spec.
If you want to prove that Blood is losing more than it gains, then show it. That way Blizz sees it and adjusts the points needed/prunes the tree and moves more to baseline, if there is an issue.
Do a 1 to 1 comparison like i did for Feral.
If this argument was between player and devs it might add something.
But to shut down another players argument with this does nothing.
We have already seen things change during alpha and early beta phases, we have already seen these talent trees change between first reveal and now.
And they have been clear these all need a lot of work.
They need to quickly convert all specs into talent trees in order for alpha to start.
And we can see there are mistakes in the trees that need to be fixed already since we can choose talents that empower an ability we never picked and it’s needed to pick another talent that is not related.
Things have changed these past two years. And even if they haven’t come out and apologize for all the bad choices they made, they have acknowledged some of their mistakes and started to address issues of the game that they have ignored for so long.
Now ofc I don’t think they are doing this because they now care so deeply for us players and only want to give us the best. They are doing it because they need to win back customers. Crossfaction had to be added because alliance was hit so hard from the big subscriber loss after the scandals. I switched to alliance for sanctum of domination and it was not a great experience except for the time I spent with my guild, but the lack of players made it hard to replace anyone after someone quit or left.
And they are removing borrowed power after trying to sell it to us as a good thing for three expansions. They brought back pvp vendors. M+ got valor points to be able to upgrade items. The vault change we got was a great improvement over the weekly chest.
We have seen a lot of great improvements recently and it deserves to be noted.
And since the new system is not tied to the expansion it’s gonna be easier to change than any of the borrowed power systems.
I was probably a little unclear in my post due to lack of sleep.
I don’t mean that we would create builds without a primary dps cooldown etc, even if that could be beneficial in some situations. Like one does not need a 5-10 minute cooldown while questing.
What I meant is that if we for example have a dps cooldown baseline, we are gonna have to play with that cooldown.
But perhaps I would like to play with another cooldown instead.
Let’s say you want to play unholy as a dot and direct damage build and not have any minions at all, that is not gonna work if all your primary dps cooldowns are baseline because they are all about pets, so no matter how you change up your talent tree if they are baseline you have to use minions.
Maybe give a path for no minions and instead your cooldowns instead makes you grow extra limbs that echo your abilities or something.
We will always have these type of abilities, doesn’t mean they have to be the same for everyone of that spec.
At least that is my opinion, more options is better and less baseline gives more flexibility when it comes to adding more options.
This is my hope too.
The shift from Borrowed Powers back to self selected powers (within a class / spec framework) will be great for alts.
Along with shorter mandatory campaigns (with skips) being with more side quests to allow for differing questing paths.
I’ve struggled with alts in the last few expansions. I’m hoping that DF will have me playing several of them from the start.
This has been said before in the thread: You’re looking at it the wrong way.
You shouldn’t count the legendary powers, covenant abilities and all those sorts of things. They are borrowed powers and you will lose them with or without this new talent system when Shadowlands is done, just like all the older borrowed power went away in BfA and Legion for instance. They are NOT part of your ‘base’ kit. But with the tree they CAN be. So it’s a win.
Previously you’d spent months, if not years, gaining and re-gaining borrowed power to get your character to feel ‘complete’. With the talent trees you just level up and put the points in there. Voila. Complete.
That’s fair. But it’s also subjective.
I won’t be able to personally give my opinion on this until I’ve seen the BM hunter talent tree. Then I can tell you whether my character feels complete or not.
My point: It’s not a universal problem, but if enough people feel that way and complain, Blizzard might change some things.
If that were the case you would have made that argument, but you didn’t. You instead chose that only these abilities and passives etc get to be part of the equation, and now you are once more making baseless claims about there being even more that we gain than there in truth is.
I dont need to make a direct comparison to your method because I already proved my point with the Blood Dk example I gave above. Long before you even started to make your feral example.
That’s not true, you left out all the aforementioned things in the comparison. Conduits, legendaries and passives to name just a few of them.
All because you knew if you did include them yoyr argument would fall apart. Meanwhile, those are in full display on the DK part.
Even if I didn’t know what we were talking about and I told you it’s gonna be worse than it already is I would still most likwly be right, because I have been right consecutively for the three last expansions.
I truly do not genuinely understand where do you get this idea that things will be better because Blizzard says so. They also said that they want the ripcord to stay- Here we are.
You showed that Feral gained x amount of thibga and lost y amount of things. What you didn’t show that Feral lost a whole lot of other things too and even tried to argue that % increases to your abilities are new gains when in truth they are just number tweaks. You didn’t show even half the truth.
I have when I showed the first picture of that Blood DK preview.
Blizzard won’t do a god damn thing according to feedback, the only thing they listen to is if you get enough people to shout the same message loud enough.
And so I tell them to get rid of our baseline abilities from the trees.
I tell them to add new stuff, not scrape the bottom of the barrel of used content.
And I tell them to give us mesningful choices, not false ones.
I proved that more than first half of the trees are currently no free choices at all, but false choices alltogether.
If that means we get shorter talent trees or they revamp it, i do not care. This won’t do, and I will keep saying it.
I am not shutting down the conversation, I am stating a fact. Blizzard is notorious for ignoring feedback despite saying they listen.
I will believe it when I see it.
No they do not. It took them 2 expansions to give us proper pvp gear back, and even that is a worse version of what it was.
It took them a whole expansion to make BFA somewhat playable. And Legion. I remember quite infamously how Blizzard even stated they wont do anything with elemental shamans till 8.1.
If they change things in a few weeks or a month, thats how it is supposed to be. But I will noy praise them for refusing to do anything for years.
The only way to make a direct comparison to live to see what you’re gaining and losing, is if you try and take your live talents/abilities 1 to 1 in the new trees and see where you make it out in the end.
But i see that you have no clue why that is exactly.
So not only you lack common sense, but logic too.
First of all, you are not comparing the whole kit we have now vs what we have in DF. You cherrypick it that way, because it suits your argument. Nothing else.
Second of all, even if everybody just agreed to whatever nonsense you claim to be common sense, the same problem’d remain:
Blizzard marketed these talent trees as something you can build freely and you can experiment with. Yet all the examples, be it fdk, blood dk or feral druid, prove that is not the case.
At best, the new talent tree gives you 20% of actual choices. The rest of the tree is false choices, as proven by the druid class talent tree and DK spec talent trees.
You have to spend a massive amount of talents on abilities that you currently have baseline, before you even get to add anything “new”. Only that new stuff is actually nothing new but recycled passives and azerite armor effects.
It is the equilevalent if they gave us just another talent row instead of the new talent tree, and locked us out of 6 of those 8 choices.
And I am not okay letting a multi billion dollar company get away with shoddy work like that. They are not a small indie company, they can and should do better.
Problem is, if you take all those basic abilities and baseline things away from the trees, there’s almost nothing left. At which point you ask again, why create a new system in the first place?
You don’t. You are still forced to pick the same stuff, as the feral example well showed.
I would rather have 8 choices that are pitted againt equal opportunity choices than 61 choices out of which at best 12 or so are actual choices, and even then all of the choices left are lukewarm, old stuff instead of new and innovative ones.
The Tree is not wholly about Choices (although this is an important aspect of such features) it also provides a sense of progression when leveling. Some of what is often considered Baseline might not really be a choice but actually spending a point in the tree will introduce the player to what’s there and let’s them read the tooltips and see what else is available and gives a sense of building towards something more powerful in a few levels time.
Not every point in the tree will be a major impact nor a major choice. While questing you might want 5% extra hps if you’re struggling to stay alive. Maybe you want 5% haste to speed up killing things. Neither are majorly impactful things but makes leveling a little easier and feels better to have a degree of agency.
The big decisions will be at the top of hte tree and hopefully here will be ones worth working towards.
I doubt you numbers of 80% are not a choice but I’m sure there will be plenty of dull talent lower down the tree that won’t be that interesting for max level characters.
I agree that tree form gives better sense of leveling progression for new players.
but i doubt so for most players, since leveling is so fast nowadays, most people will just check 3rd party guide to choose the best when then hit max level in few days. There won’t be much difference with current talents.
Meanwhile, I think DF should still have a max level progression system besides the new talent tree. If we get nothing new at max level, it will be hard for current players who are used to borrowed power/max level progress.
The problem of Legion/BFA/SL is that it has too many borrowed powers, MULTIPLE layers of them.
If Legion is only Artifact Power + Weapon traits, No Relics + Legendries
If BFA is only Azerite power + Azerite traits, No necklace + corruptions
If SL is only Anima power + Soulbinds, No conduits + legendaries.
They would be much better.
Max level progression is very important to current wow, but not multiple layers of systems.
They are keeping Renown.
I imagine there will be different Dragon Flight (bit like Covenants) so we will have some kind of progress with them. Mostly going to be Lore and Cosmetics though I’m thinking.
DF won’t have borrowed power the way it existed for the last few expansions, it’ll have only tier sets as per what Blizz stated.
And it shouldn’t, most players don’t want borrowed power anymore.
We’ll get our full kit at max, that way alts won’t have to gain… say, renown and gather conduits and farm legos, no, they can jump right into the content and start gathering gear to reach max power.
It’s a lot more alt friendly than the last few expacs for sure.
Yes, it’ll be items like: toys, mogs, mounts, pets… maybe some gear and recipes for professions.
So i’ve spent some (a lot) of time again and did the Blood spec to see what you gain and what you lose:
DK spellbook
Anti-Magic Shell
Anti-Magic Zone
Chains of Ice
Dark Command
& 16. Death and Decay
Death Coil
Death Gate
Death Grip
Death Strike
Death’s Advance
Icebound Fortitude
Mind Freeze
Path of Frost
Raise Ally
Raise Dead
Runeforging
Sacrifical Pact
On a Pale Horse
& 34. Veteran of the Third War - 60% stam 10% dmg red / 56% stam and 10% dmg red
DK spellbook didn't get
Control Undead
Lichborne
Blood spellbook - got all
Asphyxiate
& 32. Blood Boil
Dancing Rune Weapon
Death’s Caress
Gorefiend’s Grasp
Heart Strike
& 33. Marrowrend
Rune Tap
& 43. Vampiric Blood
Crimson Scourge - passive
Ossuary - passive
Talents on live
(talents 15) Toombstone
(talents 25) Hemostasis
(talents 30) Blood Tap
(talents 35) Will of the Necropolis
(talents 40) Wraith Walk
(talents 45) Bloodworms
(talents 50) Bonestorm
Talents matched to DF tree
(talents 15) Heartbreaker / Blooddrinker / 40. Tombstone
(talents 25) 45. Rapid Decomposition / 44. Hemostasis / 39. Consumption
(talents 30) 30. Foul Bulwark / Relish in Blood / 36. Blood Tap
(talents 35) 26. Will of the Necropolis / 25. Anti-Magic Barrier / Mark of Blood
(talents 40) Grip of the Dead / Tightening Grasp / 20. Wraith Walk
(talents 45) Voracious / 19. Death Pact / 41. Bloodworms
(talents 50) Purgatory / Red Thirst / 48. Bonestorm
DF talent tree used (note that there is a bug when opening it, you gain 1 talent point in Blood, but it’s actually taken from Consumption on the left side - middle of the tree, you can place it back ) https://mythictrap.com/dragonflights-talents?c254=nodp3p_ak8w0k_i9dw&c250=noi9e9_-oaxpm8_1s
Baseline DK abilities
Death Coil
Death Grip
Runeforging
Dark Command
Death Gate
On a Pale Horse
Path of Frost
Death and Decay
Rune Strike - new baseline
Raise Ally
Death Knight tree
Chains of Ice
Death Strike
Raise Dead
Mind Freeze
Anti Magic Shell
Improved Death and Decay
Icebound Fortitude
Veteran of the Third War 20% stam
Death Pact
Wraith Walk
Sacrificial Pact
Anti-Magic Zone
Death’s Advance
Asphyxiate
Anti-Magic Barrier
Will of the Necropolis
Blood Tree
Heart Strike
Marrowrend
Blood Boil
Foul Bulwark
Crimson Scourge
Improved Blood Boil
Improved Boneshield
Blood Fortification
Rune Tap
Blood Tap
Vampiric Blood
Death’s Caress
Consumption
Tombstone
Bloodworms
Ossuary
Improved Vampiric Blood
Hemostasis
Rapid Decomposition
Dancing Rune Weapon
Gorefiend’s Grasp
Bonestorm
BOTTOM LINE:
What was gained:
Rune Strike - new baseline
Death Knight tree extras
Blood Scent - 3% leech
Suppresion - 3% avoidance
Brittle - chance to gain 6% dmg on diseased enemies
Permafrost - 40% dmg shield from autoattack dmg
Merciless Strikes - 4% crit
Might of Thassarian - 4% strength
Runic Empowerment - 2% chance per RP spent to gain a rune
Acclimation - cd on IB reduced by 60 sec
Assimilation - AMZ + 10% absorb and grants 100 RP based on amount absorbed
Improved Death Strike - -10 cost and healing increased by 10%
Abomination Limb - the good stuff! - covenant ability
Blood Tree extras
Improved Vampiric Blood - extra 5% healing and 2 sec duration
Shattering Bone - Bone shield shatters and does dmg, triple if enemy is in D&D
Crimson Rune Weapon - DRW generated 5 Bone charges, cd on DRW is reduced by 5sec/charge - lego
Extra talents than live: Rapid Decomposition, Consumption, Foul Bulwark, Anti-Magic Barrier, Death Pact
What was lost:
DK spellbook - didn’t get
Control Undead
Lichborne
4% stam from Veteran of the Third War
So basically… loads of stuff was gained.
And you can give some of that up to get other stuff, because that’s the point of these new trees!
P.S. The talents picked on live to compare to, i’ve picked them out of the top of the top from Warcraft logs, what was picked the most between all Sepulcher fights. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/29#class=DeathKnight&spec=Blood
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