Personally I would have prefered the Unholy DK tree to focus one side on being a master of undead with pets and the other side being a plagyebringer without necessarily relying on the pet.
Unfortunately it seems the plague spreading talents and plagues in general are tied to the permanent pet.
Frost would also have been nice to allow choice between 2hander (oblitare / frostscythe build) and dual wield (frost strike and procs).
Finished up on the Druid tree as well. There are some glaring issues on the base druid, for example why is there a tier 7 cat specific talent. Its pretty obvious which tree ALL all ferals will go, and which balance. It would have been much better if the 4 lines focused more generally on melee dmg, survivability, utility and ranged damage. A bear wanting more damage would focus on the dmg tree etc.
Second the balance tree for me is a big dissappointment. I loved druids being a balance of nature. This tree is nothing compared to that. Where are the monsoons, typhoons, the nature relevant damage spells. All I see from the current tree is either lunar or solar focus. Might as well call them Astromancer Druids as they have no connection with nature whatsoever.
Questionā¦ Does druid still get 100 energie when shifting catform as well as 25 rage when shifting bear? I know right now its backed in the class as it is, there is no passive in the spellbook that says so, just want to make sure. Otherwise you would absolutely need to spec in āFurorā to do anything in shapeshift other than your spec.
I wonāt comment on the spec trees because I donāt know what Iām talking about.
Resto druids have decent flexibility in their class tree. The healing talents in total cost 16 points. I can pick up pretty much any individual talent Iām interested in with this. I could take Skull bash, Mighty bash, Cyclone and Ursolās if I wanted to. I was left still seeing stuff I wanted, so I think it strikes a decent balance.
My opinion on guardian is probably worthless. Guardian felt more locked in. Though itās hard to say since I donāt play tank so my mindset was āpick all the defensivesā, which if you do that you will be left with literally 2 points. Which I spent on skull bash and wild charge. But hey, a tank with innervate, thatās pretty neat.
Well Iām sure I speak for all of us when I say Iāll be sad to see you go, Lochlar. Really, I donāt know how Blizzard is going to keep their game interesting without your valuable insights.
I for one think these look like a great start and a big improvement to the current systems, and if the team can take some of the more intelligible and constructive criticisms on board I think theyāll be really good. Iām positive that guide writers will continue to recommend cookie-cutter builds, and most players will just follow the guides, but to me it does look like there will be genuine room for experimentation for players that enjoy doing that. That said, a few criticisms:
Personally I do think that feral needs a more radical rework; with the class tree itās no longer completely overshadowed by balance, but it still looks to me like it lacks a niche. I think the game would be better if every class and spec had a distinct niche (to be fair, most do).
As others have said already, some of the paths to certain talents look a bit awkward. Perhaps these have been thought out carefully already but it would be good to see some commentary on the placement of certain talents (e.g. what trade-offs the designers are intending).
The āchoice nodesā to me look like theyāre in the most danger of becoming a false choice. The choices shown so far usually have the same purpose. For example, convoke vs. incarnation. Perhaps they offer a slightly different damage profile that could be relevant, but only if tuning is near-perfect. Otherwise one option will just end up dead. Similar with the DK ones.
Iām not worried about ācoreā skills being in the tree instead of baseline - in fact I think could be very cool if done right. There might be some fights where thinking outside the box and dropping an ability you always thought of as ācoreā for something on the other side of the tree is just what you need for.the situation. Having said that, I get why people feel bad about spending points to get core abilities ābackā. Perhaps itās worth exploring if there are any clever ways around that (e.g. make certain talents in the class tree free for certain specs if you get the dependency). Looks like a lot of people are going to find that a pain point.
Overall though this looks great; I havenāt played either of these classes very seriously in recent years so I donāt have much more to say but Iām looking forward to seeing more!
this looks promising for the potential buildcrafting we can do, although i do agree with what alot of people have said about interrupts, and agree that they should always be there as a baseline thing.
but i do also like the potential in the druid tree for me as balance spec to grab āāSkull Bashāā for short CD kick (and hope Warlock can do something similar, so we can get a ranged kick tied to the player rather than the pets, aka āāCall Felhunterāā pvp talent).
all in all, cant wait to either test this on the ptr(please put this on the ptr for eveyone to test right away), or i just gotta hope i get beta access again.
I hope we will get a talent tree calculator at some point before Dragonflight for each class to see how the different trees would work. Looking forward to see the Warrior one. At this point, Iām interested in anything that is not borrowed power. I hope WoW will be able to get in touch with its roots again and talent trees used to be one of the core features of World of Warcraft.
Found this really good breakdown of the DK/Blood DK tree and like the title says, itās problematic. Picking a build with solid throughput and resource generaton means I would be playing a Blood DK without:
Deathās Advance
Asphyxiate
AMZ
Abominationās Limb
Gorefiendās Grasp
5 fun and unique spells, just removed as viable options because of how the trees are designed. There are simply too many points needed to get completely baseline abilities back. Stuff that makes me a Blood Death Knight. This was supposed to be something new and fun, but overall this first draft is far worse than what my spec has right now.
A good first step is to take all the core, rotational abilities out of the trees and replace them with some modifiers. The same goes for certain icon class/spec abilities. Vampiric Blood, Dancing Rune Weapon and Gorefiendās Grasp does not belong on a talent tree. You wouldnāt expect Divine Shield to be a talent for Paladins? Or Vanish for a rogue? Or Ice Block for a mage?
An interesting suggestion in the video was to take something like Bonestorm, which makes sense to have as a talent. After you pick Bonestorm you could then branch off to modify it. One option could be a damage explosion at the end. Another one creates an absorb shield based on the healing you did during Bonestorm. Or increase the radius by x amount of yards and have Bonestorm drag enemies towards you. Now that sounds fun to me. However, spending most of my points to have a lesser version of what I have today does not sound like fun at all.
Blizzard needs to take a step back and think about what is the absolute minimum a spec needs to function. Can I play Blood DK without Heart Strike, Marrowrend and Death Strike? The answer is no, hence none of those should be ātalentsā in the first place.
iād really like if there was some cross-sections between the three DK class trees, so youād be able to connect over from frost to blood to unholy later in the tree without having to start from the top of each one. as it stands this is really just 3 separate branches that are almost completely linear, and the only cross-over are 1-2 talent dead ends in the middle between them, thereās no way to go from row 6 in frost to row 7 in blood, for example, youād have to go all the way back to the start of Blood to get any blood talents that arent the āmeet in the middleā ones
You see this is what i want to see when someone is suggesting ideas
I hope blizzard will listen this time
so we will not end up like when many people were puting out a detailed RET paladin tier set feedback and they went with their crappy idea.
More people should go and do feedback like this
Utility and Output: They are both mixed in the trees, having to choose between improving your HPS/DPS at the cost of utility feels bad.
Non Gameplay Choice: In the skill tree I want to choose things that impact how I play. Spending 3 points in ā1% Critā feels like a waste and non choice.
Incomplete Ability: Some ability have plain number upgrade later in the tree, like Death Strike. Having to spend an additional 3 points to get the max effect on an ability feels bad.
Nothing to look forward: Trees could have been the perfect way to add news spells. However they seem to only offer to regain what you already had.
Proposed solutions
Utility VS Output: Have the class Tree be only Utility and Spec Tree be only output. Have it be about āWHAT utility do I bring?ā rather than āDo I take Utilityā.
Impactful Choices: Remove all talents that donāt give an ability or improve an ability gameplay wise: Arcanic Pulsar is a good example, it improve Starsurge in a way that impact gameplay and not just Starsuge deals X more damage.
Prune the Trees: Reduce the size of the Trees by half, right now only half of them are actually impactful choice and not just passive upgrade to yourself or spells. Leveling is fast, having a skill point every other level is not a problem.
Create new way Gameplay Possibility: The skill trees should offer new gameplay options. For example, on the DK, give me the option to make a build were I summon ghouls with runes to pop Festering Wounds instead of doing it myself.
Right now the two biggest issue in wow to me are:
The Loot System: Gearing feels awful, you can do a boss or M+ 50 time and never see the piece you need.
Class Toolkit: The class tier list is 100% made due to thier utility. As long as you have thing like the Demo Destru 4 part class will not be equal. They all should be able to customize their tool kit to be equals.
The Skills trees are the perfect opportunity to give class a flexible tools kit, like allowing a Shaman to sacrifice his Stun for an immunity. Or let a paladin give up is Bubble for a AoE stun.
Are they? They said theyād try not to do that, but rather keep the Class side of the talent tree mostly for utility and flavour stuff and the Spec side for throughput.
Well, having only choices that impact how you play is going to be very difficult, because thereād just be too many active abilities. Theyād never fit the skillbars.
I donāt agree with this one. I feel fine investing more points in a skill I want/like. Makes me feel āmore specializedā.
Thatās sort of true and sort of false.
The trees, the way theyāve been presented now anyway, offer a chance to use skills/abilities/effects together that you never could before. Legendary abilities, artifact weapon abilities, old abilities that were removed at some point, Covenant abilitiesā¦ You can make a big mix of all those things (and more) and create something new. I think thatās cool.
Strictly speaking the skills/abilities/effects arenāt new, no. But the way you can combine them is.
This is exactly what most who hate the new trees are overlooking.
Currently we have 7 rows and can only pick 1 out of 3 from each row.
In the new trees we have the talents split 1/2 to choose between, but somewhere else in the tree the 3rd talent is obtainable at the same time!
So in the end instead of gaining 1/3 talents, weāre gaining 2/3, along with lego, tier, conduits, covenant abilities that we would have mostly lost in the new expac and we can gain them at the same time, druids can get adaptive swarm and convoke covenant abilities together.
Weāll basically have more power than we have now, sure you might lose some utility/abilities, but being able to get so many of the things we have now in new ways will boost the classes more than they are now.
P.S. Between expacs, spells/abilities are sometimes lost and new ones added in, so donāt act like losing something going into another expac is new. The talent trees are not responsible for this effect, so blaming it on the new trees is absolutely ridiculous.
**Edit: I just realized changing avatar changes name, It is the monk Ezek here.
If you look at the DK, the Class Tree has a lot of output increase. To reach your max potential DPS right now means giving up AMS, AMZ, Asphyxiate and improved Death Grip.
No one is forcing them to offer that many talents, you can have less point to spend. Like I said, passive are fine if they give something interactive like Arcanic Pulsar or those talents that reduce CD when you use resource.
Currently some of the abilities are not worth it until you have spent those 3 extra points in the value upgrade. Some of those spells are enforced choice in the path, making you have spells on your bars that are a waste of a GCD. How is that good? Especially when some spell are self contain and do not need upgrades to be good.
If you look at the current trees, it is difficult to even get back what you used to have, in some cases impossible. If it was as you said it would make sense, but currently it does not feel like it.
I invite you to try this: https://mythictrap.com/dragonflights-talents and see for yourself.
Things change between expacs, no matter if we get a new type of talent tree or not, your class wonāt be the same.
With the new trees you can get other stuff that you didnāt have before in different combinations, or abilities that you couldnāt have gottenā¦ hell, you can get the whole lvl 35 talents row at the same time for Unholy if you wanted to with how you can allocate points in the new trees.
Choice for abilities will stand with you, want to take the best routes in the tree for maximum output? Youāll go that way.
Will a certain fight make some piece of utility really useful? Thatās between what you want and how the raid needs itā¦ just a random example.
Also this is just the first iteration, the way things are now set up, iām sure they didnāt think it through to the end for all of them, so they will definitely change the placement of abilities and/or add in new ones during development.
The ultimate point of these trees, is that iām able to customize my character more than with the current talent ātreesā, up to and including what kind of utility i bring.
Itās good to see the discussion still going here.
I want to remind people that this is just their first examples that they threw together so we could have something to look at and give feedback asap.
Iām sure thatās the reason we only have two classes so far and donāt see more classes being released every day.
So itās good to point out what you think is bad, but also try to offer solutions youād like to see.
Iām sure they are following the feedback for this and hopefully some of the suggestions makes it into the next round of class trees to be shared.
I only play my warrior on a serious level but used to be a frost DK in early BFA.
I am overall happy with the talent trees. I was prepared to lose some things for the option to gain other things.
As of now it feels like most of the new options are in the class tree which now offers perks from the other specs you didnt have access to before.
This is great, but I would also like to see more options for different playstyles in the spec tree.
As of now the frost spec offers very similar playstyles to the current talent system, ST Obliterate or AoE Breath of sindragosa.
Now I believe this is fine for frost since it has two pretty different builds as well as getting to pick between 2h or DW.
But as a fury warrior we donāt really have much to choose from, basically st dragon roar or aoe bladestorm which are pretty much fire and forget so no build around it, so that approach would not fly with a lot of specs.
So I hope they take a look at adding ways for other specs to have different playstyles like Frost DK currently have.
Might also want to look at ways to enhance the obliterate build.
It felt like the breath build had very favourable talents to spend their extra points on compared to obliterate, since obliterate is still gonna be the main rune spender to build runic power for breath. So extra damage for it plus giving it higher chance for rime and gives rime the bonus of generating extra runic power it is gonna continue to be the main build.
Do something exciting with frost strike for obliterate build.
Give Frost strike the change through a talent to give us Rune of razorice for a short time since obliterate build will use 2h most likely and cant have two rune enchants.
One side effect I just thought aboot is bonus sets. Since theyāre enhancing baseline spells, itās reasonable to think those would have limited gameplay impact and changes since most of spells will be moved inside talent trees.
Does that imply Blizzard would force players picking/changing talents by designing bonus sets which would heavily incentivize us to pick options we would not have? Or will Blizzard instead make bonus sets around non combat spells?
