Talent systems (trees or not) should be about giving various gameplay options, not about tuning your character according to whatever encounter it is going to face.
For example, right now, DPS specs often have to choose between AoE and ST dps, and this is bad design in my opinion. It’s nothing more than an inconvenience, because on AoE encounters you’ll just spec into your AoE build, and in ST encounters you’ll spec into your ST build. It’s a no-brainer, and not really a choice.
It would be better if our characters were competent in both ST and AoE at all time, regardless of talent choice.
“But that would make them overpowered”, you may say. But you could also tune the various encounters around the fact that our characters would be that powerful, and then they’d no longer be overpowered. So, no that would not make our characters overpowered. Instead, that would just remove the relatively useless “illusion of choice” we currently have with our talents (trees or whatever).
So what talents should be about ?
They should be about altering your gameplay, offering you various possible experiences while maintaining your character viable in all the situations his role could have to deal with.
You can have builds that are “competent” for both AOE and ST. But those are compromise. There will always be a best build for different situation. If you dont want to switches talents thats fine you can make one that is decent for both. But people you do switch will be beter. That will always be the case.
That’s my point. Instead of having a best build for each different situation, wouldn’t it be better to have multiple builds which are so close to each other in various situations that you can choose between them and it will only impact your gameplay, not your performance ?
Min maxing isnt a new thing, but this type of difference didnt exist in wow before. For example ; in wotlk ; you either specced for pvp; or pve, it had different talent combinations.
I would gladly take it ; if all of my class/spec related spells were embedded into my spell book ;and i didnt have any ‘‘choice’’ to select anything. ıts just a time waste inconvenience.
I ; enumar once again ask for your support to have all our abilities to be embedded into our spellbook and remove the illusion of talent tree choice , to rally to our cause JK . (it is just a dream tbh.)
Personally; i would like to see the class ive played as op as possible. Call it feral,survival,frostmage ,desto lock etc . Whatever…This ‘‘so called ; illusion of choice’’ is a thing of the past ; and we need a new approach on class design. This is why i also strongly believe that all talent trees after cataclysm design are mosly terrible. (lets face the horrible harsh truth)
In terms of class identity and uniqueness; Legion artifact system is the most close one to perfection. You know why?;
You spec feral ; bam ; you progress feral; without any limitations. You grow powerful in time; with full potential .
And that is how the talent system should be in next exp.
ıf they really want to add a new talent system ; legion artifact system was a perfect candidate for a balanced progression talent system. Their current DF(dragonflight) design currrently seem as ; ‘‘sacrifice this to get another x’’ is a bad design.
This is impossible. No matter how close they are, there will always been tiny variations in how builds perform, and the very top level players will always play the build that’s a tiny bit better for the encounter than any others. The rest of the playerbase will copy the top level players, and we will continue with the myth that it’s required to play a specific build in order to complete your weekly 15 key.
This.
Talents (along with gear, gems and enchants) should offer various playstyles.
There should be choices like:
1 - Two handed weapon, stacking Crit on gems etc., Talents that are a big hitter but slower.
2 - Dual wielding faster weapons, stacking Haste, Talents that speed up attacks or add some damage to each hit.
Problem is that it’s almost impossible to balance it so that both styles are equal in damage in every situation It would probably turn out that the 2-hander is better at ST whilst the dual wielder is better at cleave / AoE. But if the differences are kept as minimal as possible than they will even out over the course of most situations.
Another function of Talents is to add buttons for those who must be pressing a button every 0.9 seconds or to simplify rotations for those with slower fingers who might prefer some Passives to keep them viable (if not entirely Optimised). There are many players with issues with wrist / fingers bones or muscles that can’t be pressing buttons constantly. Varying play styles to find a rotation that works for them keeps them in the game.
There were and are mmo’s out there with fun and different styles to play in a single class, don’t know why wow players keep defending this saying it’s impossible to balance, especially the huge budget that wow has, we keep making a disservice by pating them on the shoulder saying it can’t be done, like drop the copium for once and ask for inovation… Stop worrying like it’s your life savings that you’re gambling
The level of balance seems to have been way off in recent expansion (if not before). I judging this mostly from the forums but it seems to be a generally held belief.
The players do seem to have a tendancy to MinMax Optimise to the Nth degree even in situations where it is not needed. If one Talent does 1hp more than another over a ten minute boss fight, then that is BIS and anyone not using it is a moron.
To move past this balance needs to be better. Talent Trees gives us a better chance of getting this as they won’t spend an entire expansion tuning it and then ditch for a whole new system next expansion.
Not sure how we foster a less MinMaxxy culture in the playerbase. Perhaps when balance is better there will be more tolerance for more varied specs. Although I’m likely being naive here…
It’s not because raidbots or any website or dude tells you that X talent or item is BiS that it is BiS for you.
Maybe it’s theoretically BiS. Maybe f you do a simulation on raidbot/patchwerk or something else it’s BiS.
But maybe in a more real situation (an actual fight and not a simulation) it’s not BiS.
Also, maybe for you specifically, it’s not BiS, because you’re not playing like a simulation or like the dude at the top of warcraftlogs.
Maybe for your playstyle, something else is better.
So, even if some talents have small variations and are not perfectly equal in every situation, as long as these differences are small, all the possibles choices are valid choices. And should depend only on your personal preference. Not on some dude or simulation that told you what to pick.
This is the case with rune of power. Most mages would be better off with incanters flow but they still pick rune of power despite not utilizing it properly. At least out of the mages I’ve played with. Maybe 3 out of all knew his to use rune.
“Talent systems (trees or not) should be about giving various gameplay options, not about tuning your character according to whatever encounter it is going to face.”
You do realise that’s effectively sayint the same thing twice?
You don’t HAVE to play optimally. This really is the absurdity of WoW players and they’ve created this monstrous culture that is perceived as universal. It isn’t.
It’s only an illusion of choice to people who see everything in the light of efficiency. To all those people - and there are rather likely a lot more than people think - it is ACTUAL choice because losing 1% here and there is utterly irrelevant if it means having minute-to-minute enjoyable gameplay.
Oh, and you will ALWAYS have this problem no matter what systems they make. There will ALWAYS be a ‘best’ path of everything from talents to gear to levelling routes. You make your bed, and you sleep in it.
Talent were more about choice in classic indeed. In retail, what you said is really only valid for people who do quests, low level dungeons or just chill basically. For anyone who’s trying to push keys or participate in any kind of high content, it’s not true.
I am prety sure he is talking about that “new” talent tree.
Which basicly is our classes get skinned too the bone and us reselecting “baseline” abilities we have right now + a few new ones.
(Opinion based on the Druid tree already released)
Since most content is AOE, why not just use RoP…
That is exactly the methodology I used to craft my alt legendaries aswell.
Alot of the fight’s in current xpack also are a hybrid between AOE and ST. (CN Sun king - SoD KT - SoFo Anduin for examples)
Obviously there is a choice too either play with RoP or not, Just like Conduits where you can combine Dreamweaver with RoP for double buff effect.
This is the choice in playstyle you are seeking for…
Right now I don’t like the “new” druid talent tree but not for the same reason’s you are giving.
I don’t agree with that assessment. There might be a few abilities that you consider ‘baseline’, but overal our true baseline abilities are given to us for ‘free’ as we level to 10 or they’re free in the actual talent tree for that spec.
Now, I do think that those talents that are free, shouldn’t be in the tree then. It’s just taking up space. Just put them in our skill tab when we unlock the talent tree for our spec. I think that makes more sense. Auto add them to the skillbar, just to make sure starting players don’t ‘miss’ them.