Talent revamp suggestions

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.

Read before you reply please…

You mean this choice?

http s://rpgworld.altervista.org/classic_vanilla_talent/shaman.php

With these talents you could play tanky,2h and dual wield without changing anything.

We have far more choices today than in Vanilla.

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!

Yes, but were you any good in a raid? Were you accepted in a raid with those talents and perform to an acceptable standard?

I could link talents from then as well, doesn’t mean they were any good

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 :confused:
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.

When it comes to self healing, its been 15 years and memory isnt as it was, but couldnt you use Healing potion multiple times per fight?

To be honest In terms of class design what whould be needed are;

A End to external character progressions. Even if the Legion artifact wasn’t bad and to be honest the HoA on PTR seem to turn out fine aswell. These sort of progression measures make the classes balanced around “best possible setups of external sources”.

No class/spec felt complete in Legion before you “at the very least” unlocked all the golden traits. Just like classes don’t feel complete before you have the correct traits(for the occasion) in BfA. This system also affects talent balancing, where some talents become superior given different traits etc.

Another thing which could be usefull are a full breakdown of the current talents. The devs need to go trought all of them and see why some are picked over others, due to either them being significantly underpowered, messy to use or just don’t reflect a need the class have. If a talent are widely accepted as usefull in any of the major three criterias; PvP, Mythic+ or Raiding, a talents acctually fine as it is. But there is some talents who are not considered in any of these activities and these need to be replaced/reworked or rebalanced.

So my solution to these issues whould be to not incorporate a Item grant X power system in the future and instead focus on that classes are defined by internal class choices. Rather then external choices of equipment being at the core of a characters progression. Sure gear should matter, but at the same time all classes and specs should feel complete without a Tier set, correct traits or being at the planned end of a external progression system. In legion for example alot of classes was bound to; Having the correct legendaries and all the traits in your artifact.

It don’t mater if this system are bound to a Paragonesque sort of gameplay(like AP/Azerite) or to level itself. However It needs to be a system that functions trough all content in the game. If people whould be able to for example enhance themselves with Azerite related stuff from day one of a characters leveling process it whould make leveling feel alot better since you can set up goals for yourself.

I will use the skyshard system from TESO just to state an example. In TESO you can find skyshards that grant you extra skill points. These are aviable at any point in the game and if you are quite adventurous you can build a very solid amount very early on. I won’t mention the paragon system present there since it caused some great issues by itself, especially in low level Cyrodiil pvp.

Anyhow the point I’m making is. Any system in place need to be bound to a characters personal progress, not be removed upon every single expansion aswell as it feel impactfull enought for players to go out of their way to get hold of it.

The essence system in 8.2 sort of feel like steps in the right direction, It’s impactfull, takes you places you may not otherwise chosen to venture etc. However It also suffers alot from the fact that “it will be taken away in the next expansion”, It won’t be aviable before your at max level and some classes won’t feel complete without the correct essences and traits. It’s still an external system, which is less rewarding then a Internal system.

If for example the artifact system in legion instead was; Artifact weapon + relics, relics increase traits as usuall. But the “progression tree” instead was tied to your characters specs and the Artifact power was something else such as perhaps a spiritual titanic energy source that enhances your characters capabilities.

Then the system from Legion could had remained and the new Azerite system could simply enhanced players even further. The system could also been streamlined in BfA so players could now find the spiritual energy anywhere in the world due to it leaking out trought the wound.

Then you whould have a progression tree that functioned from level one, which whould in turn make leveling a more worthwhile experience, since you whould unlock points to spend.

It whould also have removed the issue of losing significant power going into the next expansion, kept the balancing work from Legion somewhat intact and the devs whould had saved themselves from re-inventing the whole system. It whould also make all the work done trough Legion feel less of a “waste”, since the Artifact points unlocked whould not have dissapeared.

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