"Free talent points" are a myth

#0 - Sept. 21, 2010, 8:45 p.m.

Q u o t e:
if you see some dps classes that can spend all of their points on dps and skip anything utiltiy related, please bring them up so we can evaluate them.

This is a laudable goal, but I'm having a great deal of difficulty figuring out how you can say it's still your goal when there's been so little progress towards achieving it. We're coming up on October now, cataclysm launches in the holiday window, and the vast majority of trees have zero points free. Every single one must be invested into core role talents.

Are we missing a "magic" beta patch that fixes it all? Or do we just have different definitions of utility?

All of these are from a PvE perspective. This means that a talent that grants 0.1% DPS (or tanking, or healing) is mandatory over one that offers 0 core role benefit in favor of non-raid utility or fun. If you disagree with that, you have a disconnect with the way people play this game.

Note that I'm only covering the primary tree, not subspecs. There may be free points in subspecs.

One major goal of the cataclysm talent revamp was to provide players with choices, to eliminate cookie-cutter builds. If that was the goal, it's failed. Of the 13 specs I spotchecked before I got overly bored, only combat rogues are anywhere close to where they should be-- and they only have 4 points free out of 31. Not a great deal of choice there, and they're the best of the lot.

Summary/TLDR:
Unholy DK - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Frost DK - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free, 32 points required
Blood DK - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Ret Paladin - 2 Fun/Utility Talents free
Prot Paladin - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Enhance Shaman - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Resto Shaman - 1 Fun/Utility Talents free
Combat Rogue - 4 Fun/Utility Talents free
Shadow Priest - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free
Feral (Cat) Druid - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free, 32 points required
Feral (Bear) Druid - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free, 38 points required (my reasoning is below)
Marks Hunter - 0 Fun/Utility Talents free, 32 points required
Survival Hunter - 2 Fun/Utility Talents free, 32 points required

Unholy DK - No fun/utility (FU) talent points free, 31 points required
T1, T3, T6, T7 - No free points.
T2 - 1 slack point, must be invested in a PvP talent 100% worthless for PvE DPS. PvP != fun/utility.
T4 - No free points. 1st point in magic suppression here is a DPS gain, not a FU talent.
T5 - No free points. 2nd point in magic supression is a DPS gain. (Note that this assumes you want unholy to use unholy presence, with 2 points in imp. unholy presence. Currently in beta unholy spec will skip it, and have 2 points here, 1 of which will go to the 3rd point in magic supression and one actually free for FU.

Frost DK - No FU talent points free, 32 points required
T1, T2, T7 - No free points.
T3, T4 - Not only are there no FU talents, but frost has 7 mandatory DPS points at both of these tiers
T5, T6 - 2 free points for FU in each tier, but these are used in T3 and T4 for mandatory DPS

Blood DK - No FU talent points free, 31 points required.
T1 - No free points. Choice between a solo talent like butchery and bladed armor is a no-brainer.
T2, T4, T5, T6, T7 - No free points.
T3 - No free points. 6 mandatory tanking talents this tier.

Ret Paladin - 2 FU talent points free. 31 points required.
T1, T3 - No free points.
T2 - No free points. (Everybody will put the 2 points into pursuit of justice as it is an indirect raid DPS improvement in any fight with any movement.)
T4 - No free points. 6 mandatory DPS points this tier.
T5 - No free points. Repentence is utility, but it's likely to be mandatory utility. The 2 free points will be invested into long arm of the law as movement speed is important for movement fights.
T6 - 2 FU talents. Finally!
T7 - No free points.

Prot Paladin - 0 FU talent points free, 31 points required
T1, T2, T4, T5, T6, T7 - No FU talents
T3 - No free points. 6 mandatory tanking talents this tier.

Enhance Shaman - 0 FU talent points free, 31 points required.
T1, T4, T6, T7 - No FU talents
T2 - No free points. 6 mandatory DPS points this tier.
T3 - 1 free point, but will go to runspeed as it's a DPS increase on movement fights. Not a choice.
T5 - 2 free points, 1 of which goes to the second point in runspeed. The second will go to improved shields. It's a very small DPS increase as it's a terrible talent, but it's not zero.

Resto Shaman - 1 FU talent point free, 31 points required
T1, T3 - No free points, 6 mandatory healing points these tiers.
T2 - No free points. Assuming focused insight will be mandatory.
T4 - Would be 2 free points, but they are consumed by tiers 1 and 3 taking 6 points apeice.
T5 - 1 free point!
T6, T7 - No free points.

Combat Rogue - 4 FU talent points free, 31 points required
T1 - No free points, 6 mandatory DPS talents this tier
T2, T6, T7 - No free points
T3 - Would be 1 free, but it's used in T1
T4 - 2 free points!
T5 - 2 free points!

Shadow Priest - 0 FU talent points free, 31 points required
T1, T4, T6, T7 - No free points
T2 - No free points, and 7 mandatory DPS talents this tier.
T3 - Would be 2 free points, but they're used in T2.
T5 - Would be 2 free points, but they go into veiled shadows in T1 for a DPS increase

Feral (Cat) Druid - 0 FU talent points free, 32 points required
T1, T2 - No free points. 7 mandatory DPS talents these tiers.
T3 - No free points. Assuming only 1 point in stampede is required for cat DPS.
T4 - Would be 2 free points, but we're 4 ahead, so they're used in T1.
T5 - Would be 1 free point, but we're 2 ahead, so it goes into T2.
T6, T7 - No free points.

Feral (Bear) Druid - 0 FU talent points free, 38 points required.
(Bear is kind of an outlier. It has a lot of DPS talents, and it's unknown how important threat will be in cataclysm raiding. It will certainly be more important than WOTLK, however, so I noted them as mandatory.)
T1, T7 - No free points
T2, T3 - No free points, and NINE mandatory tanking talents these tiers.
T4 - Would be 2 free points, but we're 8 ahead, so they go into T2.
T5 - No free points, and 7 mandatory tanking talents this tier.
T6 - Would be 1 free point, but we're 9 ahead, so they go into T2.

Marks Hunter - 0 FU talent points free, 32 points required.
T1, T4, T7 - No free points
T2 - No free points. 7 DPS points this tier.
T3 - Would be 1 free point, but it's used in T2.
T5 - No free points. 6 DPS points this tier.
T6 - Would be 1 free point, but it's used in T2.

Survival Hunter - 2 FU talent points free, 32 points required
T1, T3, T4, T6, T7 - No free points
T2 - 2 free points!
T5 - No free points. 6 mandatory DPS talents this tier.

Ghostcrawler

#46 - Sept. 22, 2010, 5:38 a.m.

I appreciate all the work the OP put into that post, but you have to look at your definition of "mandatory." You're taking several talents with no +damage benefit and calling them dps talents because they may lead to higher dps. But under that argument even +health talents are dps because you're likely to do higher dps when you're alive.

My personal philosophy, as I have expressed before, is that the community tends to be over-obsessed with cookie cutter builds. It's somewhat understandable because the WoW community has evolved in a direction where being badly informed is worse than being a bad player. We're all very quick to judge each other based on litmus tests, such as gear scores, achievements, or proper talent builds, that likely don't measure performance half as well as we want them to.

Even many of the so called cookie cutter builds today are honest about those talents that are a toss up. Picking talent A over talent B may be a theoretical dps benefit in the sims or even for the author of the cookie cutter build, but that doesn't mean it will work for you. I have deviated from these sacred builds often on my own characters because I found that I don't rely on certain abilities or mechanics as much as the build assumes I should. Now maybe my dps (healing, etc.) would improve if I could manage to do that, but in the interim using a build that is bad for me just because it's the anointed one doesn't make sense. A- dps with the "bad" build is superior to C+ dps with the "good" build.

If it's a talent that provides a 10% dps increase or offers an ability you'll use constantly, fine. It's hard to argue that won't benefit most players. But when I see players obsess over talents that provide a theoretical 1% dps increase that is vastly overshadowed by the noise of their own performance, I shake my head a bit. Want to see what I mean? Compare a parse of yours on the same boss from week to week. You'll probably see a dps variance of 5-10% or more. That's the role of your skill, latency, bad luck, lacking the perfect raid comp or whatever else. Worrying about that 1% dps talent was a rounding error. Let's not forget that what may be 1% on one boss probably is not on another.

Finally, getting back to a "mandatory" talent, consider what you'd call a talent that wasn't mandatory. You'd probably call it junk, the way many of you dismiss the "PvP talents." If a talent is useful, then it becomes mandatory. If it's not useful, it's dismissed. That narrow sweet spot in the middle where a talent is truly optional is held to be very, very narrow indeed by many in the community.

Q u o t e:
The Devs may be correct, in theory, that we don't need to squeeze every last drop of DPS out of our talent trees to down bosses. But in practice, you try to get in a raid with a tree that sacraficed 1% DPS for some fun utility, and you don't get an invite. Why would the raid leader take someone that didn't even spec the "right way"?

Posts like this make me very sad. You're portraying yourself to be at the mercy of uninformed yet tyrannical raid leaders who are quick to judge your performance based on perceived "tells." I know you need some basis to evaluate potential recruits or even pug members. But I do wish there was some way to turn around this virtual phobia of inefficiency -- this terror of being WRONG -- that we have managed to instill in our player base. I honestly think it's one of the greatest challenges facing the game.

Q u o t e:
What's not happening there, is something like:
Post 1 - Hunter 1: Black Arrow is a weak talent
Post 2 - Hunter 2: I disagree, I enjoy additional DoTs
Post 3 - Hunter 3: It should be replaced with a pacify!
Post 4 - Warrior 1: No way, hunters already have way too many outs!
Post 5 - Rogue 2: Flare is already too strong, having additional ways of stopping our damage is imbalanced.

I already stated why just blanket complaining about all classes lacking free points does no good in my first post. You get a lot of weak feedback from people saying they just want something, but lacks any feedback to make any decisions based on that information.

I agree with Virid. There is no feasible way to talk about everyone's beef with each of 30 talent trees in one thread. By all means, bring those issues up in the forum as a whole, but I feel the only way to address all viewpoints in this particular thread is by sticking with the high-level philosophy of what we're trying to create.

Ghostcrawler

#63 - Sept. 22, 2010, 6:35 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I agree with a lot of what you're saying GC, but I gotta disagree with one thing you said. It is true that if you look back at parses from previous weeks your dps may vary by as much as 5-10% based on skill, luck, latency etc. However, you can't say that because of that fact, a theoretical 1% dps increase is any less significant than it would have been.

I'm just saying it's not worth it. How many attempts can you name in your lifetime as a WoW player where your doing 1% more dps would have made the difference between success and failure? And how many of those attempts could you have gotten 10% more dps if you had just totally nailed your rotations etc. on those fights instead of worrying about a theoretical 1% dps gain from a different talent?

Every bit helps, totally. I'm not saying throw a dart board at talent trees and expect to be competitive. But at times it's a bit like stooping down to pick up pennies in the gutter because you're about to plunk down six figures on a house. Hey, that's one-one hundredth less dollar I have to pay. :)

On a stationary fight, those movement boosts are useless. On a fight where you can't AE, those area damages are useless. If you have enough mana, then you have enough mana. Yes, I can understand the argument that it might be convenient to pick all of that stuff up because it might be useful on some fight, but if you're hardcore enough to pick up a talent because you read it was a 1% dps increase, then you should be hardcore enough to know for which fights it applies to and perhaps even be willing to swap specs accordingly. There are players that swap out a lot of glyphs in between fights or even re-gem. Some cutting edge guilds respec for every boss when they're working on progression. They probably coax a 1% dps increase out of doing so. Does that mean you should?

Min-maxxing is fun. It's part of the game. Sometimes (more rarely than is claimed) it's even necessary for progression. Just keep it in perspective. It's probably not going to doom your attempt if you pick up a fun talent instead of a 1% dps increase. If the Saturday pug won't take you because you lack the anointed talent, you're probably better off not running with them.

Interestingly, the community seems to have adopted 1% dps as the trade-off they're willing to make. You don't often see posts or guides advocating a gem or talent because it provides a 0.3% dps increase. There is something magical about 1% for a lot of players.

Ghostcrawler

#66 - Sept. 22, 2010, 6:46 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Hey GC, was wondering if we could maybe drag you back to this thread again to focus a little on the first part of Slant's post. The part I quoted pretty much sums up how I feel right now, and I know a few others who feel the same. Sometimes it seems like Cata is right around the corner and there's just not enough time for everything to happen.

We see this every expansion. Some players start to freak out because their list of demands hasn't been met yet and they sense release is imminent. Then the expansion ships and everyone is focused on some other overpowered ability that was only a blip on the beta radar.

It's inappropriate for me to provide any hints about how close we are or are not to ship. We need to provide that information through certain channels. We're happy with the talent trees given the confines of the talent system. If we were making WoW 2.0 (which we're not), the talent panes might look very different. Perhaps there would be even fewer choices and all centered around utility. Increasingly I think exclusive choices (like Starcraft's campaign upgrade system, or the way Paths of the Titans was going to work) is the only way to make interesting choices without cherry picking. On the other hand, one thing we've definitely learned through this process is that (most) players want a certain amount of safe choice. Maybe that gets back to the whole "terror of being caught being wrong" problem, or maybe the game's just too complicated. We talked about an even more radical overhaul where choosing a spec was a bigger deal and you had maybe 3 talents after that, but ultimately we understood the risk of changing too much a game that some players have stuck with for over 5 years.

Ghostcrawler

#70 - Sept. 22, 2010, 6:50 a.m.

Q u o t e:

If deviating from cookie-cutter builds to fit your own playstyle is Blizzard's philosophy, then why are the talent trees locked until 31 points are spent?

Because we're convinced those would not be a true avenue for individual expression. They would just become the new cookie cutter. Every time a spec has been viable that dabbled in multiple trees, it's because it cherry picked a certain selection of abilities that out-performed every other option (often in PvP). Consider that every tree needs a certain number of talents that provide a spec all of the power it needs to function. We need to position those in such a way that you can't get one from each tree and end up overpowered. Traditionally, we kept shoving those talents deeper and deeper in their respective trees, which just meant you had to be higher and higher level before you started feeling like the dude you imagined when you spent that first point at level 10.

Ghostcrawler

#77 - Sept. 22, 2010, 6:58 a.m.

Q u o t e:
One quick question, on a more general talent level. If there is a distinct goal to have players place at least some talent points into utility, why not alter talent trees to provide utility talents only in the first tier, or maybe two? In doing so, players would receive their meat and potatoes talents from farther down in a tree, and yet still have a freedom of choice for their initial talents and the remaining points that are left over and spendable in alternate trees.

I think I posted something similar recently, but there are a few problems with that.

1) Those top tier talents don't have many abilities to work with - often 5 or 6. There isn't much to modify at level 10 or 20.
2) Those top tier talents need to be attractive for the main spec. Enhancement doesn't want to have to get down to tier 3 before it finally get the meat and potatoes to feel like a melee-focused tree.
3) Those top talents need to be at least somewhat comprehensible to new players. By the time you're level 80 almost all players are hardcore to some extent, considering the amount of time they've invested. But when you've only been playing for a few hours, some of the more lawyerly tooltips can be overwhelming.
4) Those spots are the only place you can put something that you want accessible to all trees. So you lose some of optional feel for every "everyone should get this" or even "two specs should get this" talent.
5) If the utility feels really optional, then the e.g. healer just goes and gets more healing-focused talents in their own tree.
6) Some utility talents are so powerful that they are considered mandatory anyway. Movement speed is a big one here. It's hard to offer "just enough" utility and have the talent still be a tempting buy.

Ghostcrawler

#82 - Sept. 22, 2010, 7:03 a.m.

Q u o t e:
The fact that people would skip fun talents like Repentance, Seal of Command, or Shadowfury because they could maybe, maybe eke out another 1% (the magic number!) DPS increase seems sad to me. Seal of Command is fun! Shadowfury is a lot of fun! And the whole point of the mastery system seems to be that no matter how you spec, you'll still do alright in most situations. The biggest problem, as GC mentioned, seems to be with getting the player base to change.

What we do sometimes is say stick Repentance as a prereq for something you desperately need. The hope is we can count on paladins (in this example) having the crowd control, and the player can pick up the talent guilt free. And yet, we see a lot of complaints about the prereqs. "Why do I have to get that talent that doesn't benefit my dps?" If there aren't enough core dps talents, some players get agitated (and I'm not trying to dismiss that response as inappropriate). But that leaves less room for the utility ones.

I'm not trying to say we're unhappy with the talent trees. By and large, we're very happy with how they are shaping up. I'm just trying to explain some of our reasoning and why some of the alternate talent trees we see pitched are not tenable from our perspective.

Ghostcrawler

#86 - Sept. 22, 2010, 7:07 a.m.

Q u o t e:
You're making us feel bad telling us all the stuff you have to worry about because of us. :'(

Don't feel bad. I can always get a new liver. Seriously though, I'm not trying to whine. This is just the kind of topic that I like to think I can really share our design intent and perhaps reach a lot of players. It's class agnostic. It's complicated. It's controversial. It makes for good discussions in a way "My class is terrible" posts do not.

Ghostcrawler

#88 - Sept. 22, 2010, 7:10 a.m.

Q u o t e:
You've build GearScore into the game with your 'average ilevel'

Our average ilevel is there primarily because Dungeon Finder restricts usage and we didn't think it was fair to say "You must be this high to ride the ride" without defining "this." It's there to stop a fresh 85 who has no idea that's he's doing something terribly wrong by queuing right away for heroic Grim Batol. I would not use our ilevel as much of a serious metric. It's very easy to game by sophisticated players.

Ghostcrawler

#259 - Sept. 24, 2010, 7:01 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I don't understand the philosophy. All we have for the most part is this micro game because the meta game of positioning, strategy and compositions aren't exactly demanding at times.

I understood where you were going with your post, but I disagree with this part. The positioning and strategy are responsible for far, far more wipes than low dps. Now, very high dps can also cover for a certain amount of slop.

I also found it interesting, though I've lost the quotes now, that some players thought damage meter obsession was caused by the content being too difficult ("Gah! Zerk timers!") and others claimed it was because the content was too easy ("nothing else to do but compete"). Personally, I think it's just the sign of a 6-year old game. The Molten Core raiders were just a lot less sophisticated than players are now.

Q u o t e:
In reviewing trees, any sort of utility that is SO GOOD that it will be taken by anyone with a clue, should be considered a "role" talent, and possibly a "trap talent," and thus be a target for further review or maybe change

I agree with what you're saying, but only to a point. If player A loves a talent and player B hates a talent, then on the surface that's a good talent, right? It's optional. But it's not optional to player B. He hates the talent. For him, the talent tree is just a smaller tree. His respec options are limited. That's a different situation from the talent being a really good talent and player B just not sure he can afford the points to get it. But if it's too good, then A and B both get it and it feels mandatory.

Q u o t e:
GC, why not directly reply to the examples the OP gave rather than engage in a debate about perspective? It should be easy enough, if indeed the OP is incorrect, to provide specific examples for at least a few trees listed. At least we'd know exactly what your development team specifically deems 'optional'.

Because I feel I can predict how that discussion would go. I could attempt to respond to the rogue concerns and the paladin concerns and the DK concerns all in this one thread, and then every rogue, paladin and DK participating is going to respond to their issues only and suddenly this conversation (which to be honest, has been pretty good for these forums) shatters into a bunch of mini conversations with a lot of players just positioning for gotchas or campaigning for buffs. Forums, particularly one in which there is one of me and many of you, aren't great avenues for attempting to dismantle someone's position line by line. They are okay though for each side attempting to present their philosophy.

I'm more interested in the philosophy. That's my job -- to make sure the combat and character portions of WoW match the vision of the game.

Q u o t e:
I just can't fathom how you bring up this 1% dps argument in the same thread that you're defending what probably parses out to 0.00000000000001% dps boost a defensive cooldown gives us.

Please. The only way those are DPS talents is in PVP, they've always been considered PVP and always will.

Berserking is not the only way in which encounters can end badly.

Q u o t e:
Unless I absolutely needed a talent for a single fight (ex. deadly brew for LK, and even then you can get away without having it), there is no reason to stray from the norm. Higher Damage per second and the utility that you need to get the job done. I still see no reason for variance at this time.

But we're not talking about the norm. We're talking about the spec (and gear, etc.) that theorycrafting suggests can do the highest possible dps. It may not work for you. I have yet to see a player who can play perfectly (though some get very close). That implies everyone can increase their dps a little bit. That curve is in fact a curve, not a straight line. There are peaks and valleys. Adhering more and more to the accepted spec does not guarantee your dps linearly climbs higher and higher.

Here's a tip. Try a build. Record your dps. Try another build. Record its dps. See what does the best for you.

Since you want an example, let's say there is a talent that improves your dps by 5% of you always click the talent when your trinket procs. If you fail to do so, then your dps is only 3%. Meanwhile, another talent gives a passive 4% damage boost always. Now if you can manage the trinket trick, nobody is arguing that the dps is higher. But if you take that talent and consistently fail to use it at the right time, then your dps is suffering. Yes, you *should* be able to get better. But how many times are you going to fail to reach 5% and fall to 3% before you accept that maybe 4% is okay?

Q u o t e:
But that was my point. People who care about eeking out that last 1% are also the same people that don't die from bad play. Or that save cooldowns for the burn phase.

No, with all due respect, I think that's where you're wrong. The people who *should* be the ones worried about that 1% dps increase are the ones who have minimized every other potential dps loss (such as not dying). Too often the ones that are worried about the 1% dps increase are the ones with sub-optimal gems and weapons of unusual weapon speed who don't understand why the boss keeps parrying them, and so on. I have been able to trivially out dps while using a "bad spec" folks using the "right spec," and I'm sure many of you have too. (I remember the day our rogue in BWL nearly topped meters using only blue gear just to prove that point.) If you are at the top of your game, by all means obsess about that 1%. If you're like the remaining 90% of players, then don't feel so guilty about getting a fun talent.

Q u o t e:
However, just looking at your build, you might personally take a point out of improved poisons to get vigor, in the name of having more burst when needed (for example, stockpiling energy for val'kyrs on LK).

Or, if you were running an assassination spec, you could pull points out of anything that just gives a flat DPS boost to get something like improved kidney shot or quick recovery. Sacrificing 2% DPS to gain 20% healing done to you on a fight like Sindragosa or heroic LK (infest kills people hard) would be very reasonable.

Yes, exactly. Get Killing Spree. No argument there. But your choices on other talents are going to vary a lot depending on the fight. Just looking up "max dps spec for Combat" might give you a cookie-cutter build, but not necessarily an effective one for the content you're on.

Q u o t e:
There will always be cookie cutter builds that people say you "must" use to raid, since even if each talent point is balanced to within .00001% of each other, there will still be a maximum DPS/HPS spec. These people are wrong and outright ridiculous at times because they assume an optimal situation in every respect. 99% of us do not raid in optimal situations and even DPS need to be concerned about surviving, even if it costs them a little bit of raw DPS. If your raid leader invites the guy who dies every fight but pulls 2% more DPS than the guy with the "wrong" spec, it's a problem with your raid leader, not WoW.

Yes.

Q u o t e:
IMHO a system between that & the current one would be really nice where the REAL mandatory talents (the 1 pointers & things that you the devs intend every build with that spec to have) would be given for free just like the level 10 abilities. They would just be given at different levels.

Yeah, I agree. Something to consider. We don't really expect the Destro lock to agonize about whether to choose Backdraft or Chaos Bolt. They are just a rite of passage at that point.

Q u o t e:
For those not engineers or math people, "mean" is the sum of all your data divided by the quantity of data.

You answered your own question.

Q u o t e:
Kinda sad that the only way you thought you could get away with cookie cutter specs is not by making other talents that are more attractive or give a choice is style of dps/tanking/helaing, nope you just went and made every spec cookie cutter. With a few non-choice choices. (i.e. utility vs dps)

We'd be having this same discussion if the Cataclysm model was to take the 31 point trees and expand them to 51 points. "I thought we were going to get real choice with these new trees, but there are all these +5% dps talents. Someone is going to math out which of those to get or not and then we're all going to have cookie cutter builds again."

Ghostcrawler

#260 - Sept. 24, 2010, 7:01 a.m.

Q u o t e:
However, that 1% gain from talents is useful no matter how well you play.

If you die halfway through the fight, then it's a 0.5% dps increase. :)

Besides, it's a only theoretical 1% dps increase in the first place. It may not be a dps increase for you. If it's a +Heroic Strike talent and you don't hit Heroic Strike enough, then it isn't going to give you the 1% promised.

Q u o t e:
But you can (and used to) build in barriers to prevent those that shouldn't be there from being there. There is a reason for the proliferation of these other metrics, and I can clearly see a correlation between them and the "accessibility" of your game.

I agree that probably would work. That doesn't make it a good idea though. We don't like the thought of telling players at level 1 that only a select few of them will be able to kill the dragon and the rest will be voted off the island. Sure it feels great for the dragonslayer, but all the rest of the players never get to experience the end of the game. Arthas, that guy they've heard about for years, perhaps even played as if they played Warcraft III, becomes something they read about on the forums instead of something they got to experience. Imagine being shown a great movie and being kicked out near the end because only the better moviewatchers deserve the experience. But this is a whole different discussion. :)

Q u o t e:
Would make for some really diverse specs. One person might want to go for the damage reduction 2U's. Another might want to go for the ones that change the behavior or interaction of certain spells/buffs. The other might go for a 2U that gives you more mobility.

It gets even better, though more restrictive, if you force players to spend 5 points in the previous tier instead of backfilling anywhere in the tree.

Q u o t e:
To nitpick briefly, I think relatively few people are worried about being wrong. Rather, they're afraid of that hypothetical tyrannical raid leader perceiving them as wrong. They're certainly out there, too. Pushing for more fun/utility talent points to be freed up in Cata is probably the best thing to combat this.

However, it's also severely overstated. If the number of people running around in un-gemmed un-enchanted raid gear with 71 points in 1 truee and 29% +hit are any indication, most raid leaders aren't so discerning.

Yeah, I agree on both points. But I appreciate that bettering your characters is a major motivator, especially at the endgame, and sometimes very small incremental steps are the only ones available. All I suggest is that players keep it in perspective.