Talents as they are don’t feel very satisfying, we’re usually sticking with same picks forever (best ones), rather than having different picks based on our gamestyle or situation.
So instead of:
15 a b c
30 a b c
45 a b c
60 a b c
75 a b c
90 a b c
100 a b c
This option allows players to spec fully AoE/cleave, or ST/utility, or AoE/ST, or ST/Cleave…
Tanks and healers would have their own trees.
Tanks could have:
Sturdiness (Damage reduction spikes, cooldown based)
Endurance (Focuses on overall tankiness, such as increased health/armor, empowered low cd cooldowns)
Power (Increases damage and threat)
…
Healers could have:
Power (Increases potency of healing effects)
Endurance (Mana pool and mana regeneration/restoration, spell cost reduction)
Hybrid (Focuses on damaging abilities more than healing, “full” hybrid could be used for solo content or when healer is not needed)
Those 2 things usually don’t go hand in hand. If you’re talking about playstyle, unless you want to try something different, you’ll usually stick to what’s the best fit for you, no reason to change it.
The second issue, changing talents based on situation, we actually had that in legion. Some rows had a choice between single target and aoe damage for example and it was possible to have an AoE focused build (for M+) and a raid boss single target build.
If you plan a system like that where you change your talents based on situation, then you can’t call it a “choice” and it’s not satisfying either.
problem you have with this is that it will just end up as it was in Classic, all the options but nothing of value other than the ‘Cookie Cutter’ build shown on the external websites.
Not everyone raids, there’s pvp and m+ too, as well as world content and warfronts/islands, I love AoE/cleave builds for example, so I mostly play classes that excell at that, but it would be nice to have option to be ST for those that do raid. For example arms warrior is near useless on ST compared to other classes, but cleave/AoE it shines, so you have to change fury to raid, and you can do arms in m+, much worse than just changing talents.
That’s… exactly what we have now. People go to icy veins and take whatever talent they’re told to take, rather than having several different spells and effects to pick from, even if 1 is underpowered, combined with 1-2 other it could become useful.
Which is why things won’t change, why do they need to if all its going to do is send people to do the same as now, there was no choice in Classic, it was an illusion of choice.
It wont make a difference, people will still just go to the external sites to get the ‘premium’ build.
So that’s your response to 1-2 talents being irrelevant in each row, do nothing? And why do you keep bringing up classic, my suggestions is nothing like Classic, it’s basically what we have now, but expanded to suit different kinds of play. Did Classic have mythic+? No, so people went with ST picks, now we have AoE, cleave and ST fights, and utility can be useful in mythic+, so talent expansion would be very much welcome.
Yes, I’d much rather they sorted the actual gameplay out that waste time on something that will result in the same as we have now, namely cookie cutter build from external sources!
I bring up classic because what you are suggesting is what we had then, an illusion of choice where there isn’t one.
6 different spells/effects for ST, 6 for AoE/cleave is cookie cutter? Hmph.
Don’t think you know what cookie cutter means. You’re comparing “5/5 for 10% intellect” with actuall spells or major effects that affect rotation and gameplay.
Yes have full knowledge of what it means, been using the bloody thing since Classic, and what you are suggesting, no matter how you tart it up, will still result in players going to external sites to get the best, with no options, just an illusion of one.
There was more choice in classic then now, yes for raiding and end-game content it was bad. But for just casually playing the game it wasn’t.
I played a shaman main during classic, I was able to choose multiple play styles that all worked.
Here’s a small breakdown of what I could choose from.
Dual-wielding shaman with fast attacks, focusing on dps.
2h shaman with powerful single attacks, and strong defensive abilities.
Tanky shaman focusing on pure defensive capabilities, with a shield in the off-hand
And that is just for the melee aspect.
There is to much focus on pure hardcore raiding, classic didn’t have that focus.
It’s actually quite funny, back then people were more hardcore in general than they are now, right now a lot of people don’t seem to do raids (judging from how often it’s mentioned in the forums)
Today we could use the classic talents, whilst back then we could’ve use the current talents.
Wow has become more casual, classic talents were casual. Current talents are more aligned with pure raiding.
No there wasn’t, it was an illusion of choice, if you wanted to raid you had to follow the talent choices given to you on an external website. You could justifiably choose anything, but you would soon get kicked for not having the correct talents required
As for levelling, again you could choose whatever, but only the given options were viable
not onley are the old vanilla talent tree’s boring and did not give a real choice but also you wasted your time cause blizzard doesnt listen to suggestions, they do what they think is best.
I did read before replying, nothing was viable, even when levelling if you wanted anything half decent, it was all followed from external websites.
This is after all a thread on how changes during raiding for the current talents could be implemented, maybe you should read the whole thread before just jumping on the last post!
Its enhancement talents. There was no reason to bring enhancement no matter which talents. And i am agreeing with you. I was pointing to gnome that there was no “choice” only illusion of choice.
I completely agree with you. Talents back in Vanilla were hot garbage.
I for one enjoyed playing casually with a bad build, it didn’t matter to me if I wasn’t playing optimal.
Did I complete the quests I wanted to? Yes.
Did I complete the dungeons with a group? Yes.
Did I defeat other people in pvp? Yes.
So yes, for me it was viable to choose those options. I got what I wanted out of those talents.
I never once looked up a build during vanilla till cataclysm. Never had an issue with content being impossible to do.
As for the latter part of your reply:
Any thread about the talent system is about every aspect of the game, you can’t only talk about one and not the other.
A change in the talents affects every player, deciding to only talk about one aspect is bad, you can’t come up with a good solution that way.
Just using an example.
as for “With these talents you could play tanky,2h and dual wield without changing anything.”
The links isn’t showing it filled in for me
Still, based on what you said, yes you can play with those styles, just like you can do Aoe whilst not choosing any talents at all right now. It doesn’t prove the talents are useless.
If we look at the tree, one of the talents (enhancement) has a talent called Shield specialization. 5% increased block with 25% reduced damage whilst elemental warding a elemental talent gave you 10% reduced damage form fire, frost and nature effects.
Great if you wanted to go for a defensive build. Bad if you’d go for damage.
What I’m feeling you are thinking, is that I’m praising the vanilla talents for being super great or something, which I’m not. I’m just pointing out that you had different options for different playstyles, that were viable to choose.
It wasn’t an illusion, choosing different talents did make a difference. Sure it wasn’t significant but it still had an impact in your playstyle.
I will be fair to say that some classes were more prone to being viable (or not) than others.
Yes, but u pointed Enhancement shaman. Which was one exception. Which had design in its spec which gave him defensiveness but wasnt viable as tank post 30 lvl or something. Where was choice in a restoration shaman, Elemental shaman? Retri paladin? Shadow priest? And so on? Enhancement shaman in Vanilla had weirdest design. it had talent for block, but no gear that gave block increase. Almost no high lvl mail items gave any defense stats.
Also evidence how bad enhancement was designed, if u resetted your talents after playing with 2h Mace for example, you would lose your 2h mace weapon skill. You picked worst talent tree ever designed in WOW as an example…
Also you can see how drunk and high whoever designed Shaman talents was, there is talent deep in Elemental that gives u increased melee crit after critting with spell??!!
Depends on how you look at it.
Immersively it was one of the best In my opinion, You had so many different weird options to choose from, you could really build it into your characters backstory, whilst still being able to do the content you wanted.
It’s not that black and white.
That talent you mention “Elemental Devastation” wasn’t that deep that it wasn’t viable for the melee player. You had choices for all the shock spells up to that specific one.
Combine this with the melee talents and you had a 2h shaman that was focusing on shocks and windfury crits.
Vanilla was much slower, right now you’d think it’d be really bad. But at the time getting a few decent crits in was a major deal, there wasn’t as much self-healing as there is now amongst every class.
But if you would look at it from a raiders point of view, yes it was complete and utter trash.
