MOP Talent Trees - By Class is not working

#1 - Jan. 26, 2012, 7:44 a.m.

First off, I don't have any problem with the concept of the new Talent trees where we only have 6 meaningful choices. I agree with Blizard that the 'choices' offered by the old talent trees were virtually non-existant at best, traps for uninformed players at worst. I think distilling the choices down to a few meaningful ones is a good direction, and Bliz should stick with it.

What I don't like the more I look at the Talent Trees however, is only having one tree per class, rather then a talent tree for each spec. This is creating a host of problems:

Example: Priest Tree - The Healer vs DPS talents.
Look at the End tier of the Priest tree, Vow of Unity. It creates a link with a target that causes all healing you do to that target to also heal you for 20%. How in the hell is a Shadowpriest supposed to look at this talent as any sort of Viable option?

Example: Rogue Tree - what happened to Subtlety?
Subtelty is the 'stealth focused' Rogue Tree. It's supposed to be it's difining trait. yet look at everything that make subtle rogues subtle, and almost all of them have been moved to talent choices. Nightstalker, Shadowstep, and Shadowdance are what defines a rogue as stealth focused now, not anything the subtlety tree. The only remnant of subtletly left to sub spec is a 10% damage bonus for a couple sec when you break stealth. The Mastery - Executioner - certainly screams assassination to me far more then subtlety.

Example: Mage Tree - LOL Bombs
There is no choice here. Even if you strip out all the passive damage bonuses from being a spec, you still have too much synergy between each spec and it's given bomb. Ignite Mechanics are still going to make all fire mages want living bomb. The Arcane Torrents buff from casting Arcane Blast is still going to force Arcane Mages into Arcane Bomb. Shatter mechanics are going to make Frost Mages go Frost Bomb. And even if you strip all this out, you'll still run into theme consistancy. Most of the people who pick Frost spec are going to want to cast frost spells, ergo, even if you balance all bombs to be equal - all things being equal, the people who want to play frost mages will probably want frost bombs - it just goes with the theme.

Example: Warlock Tree - Spec Scaling dictating talent choice
Lets look at the Tier 1 talent Soul Leach: Your core nuke spells (Shadowbolt, Incinerate, Malefic Grasp) heals you for 15% of the damage you deal. Well lets see, Destro Locks are all about big nukes, while Affliction probably has a stronger pet contribution and much much stronger dots.... Malefic Grasp, if balanced right, should be downright anemic compared the Incinerate. And yet both are getting the same % of health returns. This means Soul Leach is a *much* stronger talent for a Destro Lock then an Affliction Lock - again, your choice is being made by your Spec.

Example: Druid Tree - OMG WORDS and missed Opportunities
Look at the description of each Druid Talent, JEEBUS it's like a mini encyclopedia! In trying to make every talent do something for every druids spec and all the different roles they play and all the different ways of doing those roles, you are making freaking nightmarish abominations of talent descriptors. And you are missing out on such opportunities. What if there was a talent to let Tree Druids choose between a permenant Tree of Life form and a cooldown based Tree of Life form? Well - can't do that, because how do you adapt that talent choice to a Bear Druid? Obviously you're not going to offer Cooldown bear vs passive Bear, if you tank, you need to be a bear, some old guy in leather robes doing most of his tanking except when he's blowing cooldowns will look silly.

I think the new talent system could be greatly improved if each spec had its own talent grid to pick from. And this is imporant, NOT EVERY TALENT NEEDS TO BE UNIQUE. It's ok if the same talent appears in the trees of multiple specs. Dark Regeneration is a great universal talent that any warlock could appreciate - so go ahead and put it in all 3 warlock spec trees. You can even copy entire Tiers. The lv75 Tier of the DK tree is a perfect example (Blood Tap vs Runic empowerment vs Runic Corruption) - that is a choice that does make sense to every DK spec and could be presented across all 3 specs. You can even mix it up a bit. For example, what if you offered Grimoire of Service and Grimoire of Supremacy to all 3 warlock specs, but only Aff and Destro got offered Grimoire of Sacrifice while Demo got a different 3rd talent (Demo should NOT be playing petless)?

I think by unchaining yourself from only having one tree for each class, you could really improve this system.

#14 - Jan. 26, 2012, 8:09 p.m.

One of the problems we're specifically trying to address with the new talent system is getting back a little to the sense that there are 10 classes in the game (soon 11) instead of 30 (soon 34). A common complaint we saw about the Cataclysm talent design was that hybridization was greatly downplayed. Now it’s easy to dismiss going down two trees as never really having worked out, but it’s clear that many players are in love with the idea of doing so.

We also just want to keep the total number of talents under control, since the intent is that they have pretty big effects. If you're facing a Frost mage in PvP in Mists of Pandaria, you’ll have even less of an idea of what is in their toolbox than you do today. If you're a raid leader, you won’t be so certain what abilities your Discipline priest has to deal with the upcoming boss. A little of that keeps gameplay feeling fresh, but too much of it can be overwhelming. If each of the three mage specs, for example, had different talent choices, then we would have 612 total talents in the game instead of 198. Even 198 is a lot to learn. We also have the suspicion that coming up with 612 really awesome talents will be much more challenging. One of our design philosophies is concentrated coolness: have a few awesome things instead of a lot of mediocre things.

Now in some ways we are strengthening the concept of a spec by really pushing rotations and some other signature spells to specific specs. Immolate is Destruction only. Backstab is Subtlety only. Given that, talents are a great vehicle to make sure that your character still feels like a warlock or a rogue at the end of the day.

We really want to avoid talent synergies where only one talent on a tier makes sense for your character. This would be the case if say Fire mages did bonus damage with only Fire spells, or there was one healing talent on a tier competing against two DPS talents for your priest. Please continue to bring up concerns you have in this regard (though not necessarily all in this thread) and we will try to address them.