Your toughs on class/spec/talents/skills design: LONG TERM

Community General Discussion
21

The borrowed power system is feast and famine for me.

I like getting new toys each expo, that can arguably expand my class in greater ways than simply giving me new abilities. I also get that you just can’t keep adding stuff endlessly because of bloat. But having an expo where I get nothing (no new class stuff nor BP systems) would disappoint me. Scenery is cool and all, but expos need to offer more than locations, that’s patch stuff to me.

On the other hand it really sucks to lose stuff when it does change how you play fundementally or really makes the play “feel right”. A good example now is Havoc when you have lots of Furious Gaze traits. This just works so well with Demonic it feels like they’re together, but they’re not. And when SL hits I lose that. I also lose my Hour of Reaping SBs when tanking, my Fiery Brand utility through Revel in Pain, as well as Vision of Perfection procs.

Yeah, they’re “buffs” but my point is it is frustrating having to reacquaint myself with a class each expo because this stuff really changes how you approach them. It’ll be the same in SL with Conduits and Covenants. I’ll get used to playing with say Elysian Decree/Sinful Brand/Fuel/The Hunt and whatever conduits I pick and my play will feel good around that, but then in 2 years it’s gone again.

It’d be kinda cool if some of it stuck around, and you could pick and mix from these systems but not use all of them at once. Admittedly balance would be horrendous though. They’d also need to be reworked into a pervasive system (like talents, but not actually talents) that sits outside resources specific to an expo.

Something like Legacy Powers. During a current expo it’s same as current. But when that expo ends, the systems become part of the Legacy Powers tabs (in reworked forms where needed, ie Essences become passives or actives in their own right, not tied to an item). Say you have X amount of Legacy points, and activating certain parts commits certain amounts of points. Allowing you to stick with those you enjoyed most over time. There may need to be certain restrictions like you can only commit to one legacy set at a time (ie if spending in BFA Legacy you can only commit points there, you can’t combine Legion passives with BFA stuff). Would be really tricky to balance and ensure no messy combos, but nice from an RPG point of view.

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22

Probably, even if its a case of just overhauling abilities you can choose from. Some efficient would be to just revert classes back to how mists of Pandaria played, since that what they basically did for druid as an example when it comes down to Shadowlands.

Old talent trees were mostly fake choice since a lot of it became staple must haves :man_shrugging:

The game could be figuratively more healthy if classes had more utility /survivability as a whole, older expansions at least had fleshed-out classes even if they were over the top.

Having a special feature of each expansion is fine providing classes without them can function fine too–we shouldn’t be at this point when every time pre-patch for an expansion rolls out everything feels half done which means that removing abilities should be the last thing they do.

Old loot should remain as old loot and never re-see relevance UNLESS it gets re-made like how you see several prints of the same card.

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23

Legion, BFA and now Shadowlads all added lot of passive effects to classes as borrowed power. I’d like to see these effects baked into a more extensive talent tree in the future, instead of borrowed power. The current talents are lacking anyway, where in a lot of cases you are always running the same ones because they are the only viable ones.

Additionaly if they feel that the expansion is lacking in content due to the lack of borrowed power, they can always try and implement a new spec for each class, something which I have been longing for a long time.

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24

Insert PoE type talent system. Would be crazy / fun

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25

Telestrian
Something like Legacy Powers. During…

Can you expand your idea on that? You are suggesting an additional “talent tab” where you would choose a particular expansion, that allowed you to commit into a certain game style that aligns with the way that spec was played during the chosen expansion. Is my perception correct? How would that play into the “new system” from shadowlands? you would neglect the new system, and choose the legacy one?

Vulrin
Having a special feature of each expansion is fine providing classes without them can function fine too–we shouldn’t be at this point when every time pre-patch for an expansion rolls out everything feels half done which means that removing abilities should be the last thing they do.

I believe that is intentional, an objective of Blizzard. This way, they gain development time and the incoming fixes and development (or class completion) gives the illusion of progression for us, as well as content. Contrary to one big initial release of new spells, at the beginning.
You also mentioned “revert classes back to how mists of Pandaria played”. How would you fill different expansions “game styles” into that system?

Kornag
I’d like to see these effects baked into a more extensive talent tree in the future, instead of borrowed power.

100% agree. The question is how? what would be the best compromise :stuck_out_tongue:

Golganar
Insert PoE type talent system. Would be crazy / fun

Wouldn’t go that far. Would content with a pool of skills, lets imagine 100 (completely made up number) different skills you could choose from your skill tree or talent tree and you could pick, lets say, 20… You would have at least 5 different ways to play your class/spec. where one of them, was the BFA way, other one legion, other a new one, etc…

26

Blizzard really missed the opportunity to give us the talent tree system of old (Vanilla - Cata) back with the release of Shadowlands. I hope they will realize this and we will see it return the next expansion.

27

I’ll try to explain because I came up with this on the spot last night haha.

Characters have two tabs dedicated to their power: talents and legacy.

In a current expo, you deal with the system however it comes. So for SL, we deal with covenants as we are going to: through our covenant haven (yes this is many tabs)

Talents operate as normal.

Legacy - upon an expansion being retired, core “systems” of it are worked into the legacy tab. Legacy powers are used in tandem with the active current expo system (you get both, you can’t ignore the current in favour of the old, rather you explore the current with the familiarity of the old you don’t want to abandon)

At a base level, the default appearence of this tab looks like the spec one, but instead of specs, it’s legacies. At current we have two “systems heavy” expos. So for SL, we’d have a choice of either Legion, or BFA.

Upon clicking the legacy of choice, you get a new page divided into actives on the left and passives on the right, with a maximum of 20 Legacy points to spend (you earn 2 per ding in SL). I’ll use BFA as an example.

On the left you have actives: essences. Here you pick one active essence from the expo, costing 8 points. Once you pick one, you can’t pick another for your given spec, but you can set another as another specs picks. Picking the essence gives you the passive minor effect too.

The on right you have two different passive lots: essence passives and azerite passives, although only class specific passives and the 4th ring traits are available.

Each minor essence costs 3 points to pick, but you cannot pick more than 3 minor essence passives total.

With the Azerite passives they cost 2 points, you can “rank them” by comitting another 2 points to one you like, which behaves like azerite trait stacking up to three. The 4th ring traits cost 1 point each, again you can multi rank them to 3.
You can commit up to 12 points on the class specific points before you’re stopped from picking more.
For the 4th ring traits you can commit as many points as you like, but certain picks (like impassive visage and Resounding Protection) would “share ranks” to prevent you having more than 3 points spent across these picks for balance.

This allows you to pick which parts of the prior expo you liked enough to keep, and gives some flex. The points may not be perfect, the main thing is I want there to be a dilution of the legacy system, so we can’t have all of what we had in BFA, (1 essence active, 4 passives, up to 6 class specific az traits etc) rather we get to pick some of it. So long as the points accomplish that, the numbers are immaterial.

Again, you can right click to determine how the spends are for other specs and you could toggle which spec setup is being shown at the top regarding unique traits.

You would be able to setup the other legacy too (Legion) but like your spec, you can’t change which you’re using unless rested.
Recommitting the points in your legacies would cost gold, increasing and reset per week.

The main trick would be those abilities that duplicate, ie Phoenix Flames became a talents obviously this would need to be changed and mages get a new talent.

But for those abilities that become some core in the minds of players, this is a way for them to remain.

It probably reads very complex. I don’t think I’ve explained it very well.

So for this guy: I could spend in a few ways:

I could pick Vision of Perfection active (8 points)

I could then mix and match my passive picks to make up the 12:

3 essence minors plus either 1 class az and 1 4ring az
2 essence minors and 3 class az
1 essence minor 2 class az and 3 4ring az

Etc.

It may make setting up your char very complex, but unlike BP systems this doesn’t go away, so the time to theory it is ample. It would allow potential for development In the future , by adding more points, allowing points across legacies etc.

It’s probably not the best way to do it, but I think losing every part of BP systems is crap, and it would be good to have a way to keep some of it around and pick which you liked best. It will make the game more complex though.

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28

No it wasnt. MoP classes completly lack any sort of idenitity. MoP was time where classes were completly ruined from rpg standpoin.

29

Classic have amazing class desing. Lot of idenitiy and uniquenes. Every single class was different from each other and not single class felt same as it is nowdays.

30

Ahh, you still here!

It was not Mop, but cata. And bring the player, not the class >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> bring the class, not the player

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31

Not in RPG game.

32

They should just stop with the borrowed systems they added since Legion.

Not only it feels bad each time a new expansion comes but we KNOW with their past records they can’t get it right and no wonder : Legion, BFA and now Shadowlands adds layers upon layers of borrowed power.

It’s a NIGHTMARE to balance and get right, I’d say even impossible unless you make everything the same.

They should just stick to talents, class trees and focus on that and the classes instead of wasting so much dev time on these borrowed power systems.

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33

And how are talents different to borrowed power? The whole idea of borrowed is that they don’t want to add new talents, because it becomes nightmare to balance.

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34

A complete new idea, ty. Great job. I hope you don’t mind If I summarize the main characteristics into bullet points. Correct me If I am wrong:

  • New talent systems and borrowed power would always work as Blizzard wants, in the new expansion (example: shadowlands would work as intentended)
  • A new “Legacy tab” would exist, where you could optionally choose a “core system” that was retired (example: BFA system with essences, traits, etc, all of this is remade into a talent tab inside the “legacy tab”)
  • Long Term: when shadowlands ends, developers add the current system into legacy, and create a new one for the expansion from 2 years from now.
  • The Azerite, or AP(Legion) disappears, and you gain “legacy points” instead, to gain spells/traits/skills etc.

Q:
Is it because you prefer the UI of each expansion? assuming the legacy tab would resemble the old systems.
Because if they remade a complete new talent system, allowing the gameplay of different expansions to be choosen though a tree, you get the same result.

What if a player did not want to choose a legacy power? how could this be balanced? because they are using both current system + a legacy, he would have a more wide tool kit (options to play with, powers, buffs), higher damage, better spells, etc.

35

Because talents aren’t layers upon layers of conduits/covenant abilities/legiondaries effects.

You get a talent tree for each spec. It’s much easier to balance and fix and won’t cause drama because X legiondary is weak/op or a conduit sucks or a covenant ability is crappy, or can’t choose the covenant I like because another is meta/more optimal for my character.

With SL you touch something you have to look out at the other systems. It’s a design mess and a waste of dev time.

36

That’s really irrelevant to balance issues. Doesn’t matter where the power comes from, they still need to balance the different choices. In the case of talents, it’s forever. For borrowed power it’s just for the current expansion, so it’s a lot easier.

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37

You misunderstand, when you have multiple systems that impact your gameplay it DOES take more time and is more hard to balance.

Do you really believe :

  • conduits
  • covenant abilities
  • Legiondaries with various effects

VS

  • A talent tree for each spec

Are the same in terms of difficulty to balance ?

With talent trees that have depth and actual choices, it’s much easier because you don’t have to worry about anything else that could impact your modifications.

A problem with a spec or a specific ability ? You look a the single system in place and fix it.

What we will have soon is an incalculable number of bandaids to try to fix the issues and it will probably take up x.1 or worst case x.3 to get them more or less balanced. There’s just way too many variables with the current systems while they could go for something much simple for both themselves and the players.

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38

No, but one needs to be balanced just for the current expansion, and the other has to be kept balanced in all future expansions. We can’t have multiple talents added each expansion that are balanced, fun, and class related. At best we can get 2 of those traits.

39

Your summary is accurate.

It’s less about UI, more about losing stuff that feels good and retaining an element of build and pick about it. Sure they could roll my azerite into my core kit or talents, but why not allow it in addition and save talent revisions for new ideas if they just be changed rather than covering up stuff they made that was “too good to let go”. This way the two don’t conflict.

Regarding players not picking one, I hadn’t considered that, assuming an individual hated prior systems. Only two solutions as far as I can see. Either they’re recommended they pick one or they lose out OR they’re offered something else altgoether. Ie Legacy points can be spent on stuff like talents (allowing you to pick up say two additional talents on the rows we have) or spent to allow boons on whatever the current system is. I’d need to think about it more to come up with a proper solution.

My fear is it would make the game incessantly complex though. I mean this could be good for promoting real freedom whilst building (the talents are not enough, hence BP every expo), for example with Veng DH there would be Legion Legacy builds, BFA legacy builds, Double Talent builds etc.
Of course a meta would emerge, but for those who like a bit of freedom it’d allow a lot more of that.
It would require obscene balancing however, so I don’t think it’s likely.

Maybe I just think despite BFAs mixed review, I will miss my traits and my essences, and I’d like not to throw them away to rediscover them “in a different name” in the new system. I’d rather the new system was, well, new.

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40

Mists and WOD design appealed to me a lot.
Maybe even WOD, as in MOP the common complaint was that the classes are very homogenized because of the number of abilities they have. Everybody could do everything and there were little to none niches (for classes to excel in those)
Especially druid’s skill Symbiosis was at fault of creating ability bloat and homogenization, as you needed entire excel tables to determine who gets what. It was a fun ability but utter nightmare to balance.

WOD struck some balance between having lots of buttons to press and each class having access to everything possible.

I detest the current design of giving abilities coming from external systems such as golden traits, essences and covenants. I really hate this and I don’t want a third expansion with AP grind. This time it’s capped but it will be a chore you need to go through, even though your character might be long past the point of gearing up.

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