Maybe they should just accept, not everything has to more stats when it comes to classes, I think players would have been more happy with just some work on class lore and optional astatic changes to kits and abilities. The Murder hobos of azeroth have plenty of buttons to kill things, just focus on making us look cool doing it.
It's going to be a nightmare to balance. Blizzard shooting themselves in the foot again. The game doesn't need more talents, just better itemization that doesn't age like milk.
Imagine, instead a talent point every level. We instead got class quests. One for each hero spec (spec specific quests)
And when you complete the quest line you got the cosmetics…and we got that Instead of new talents. Instead of 429 talents they will need to maintain for the full expansion…429 quests with voice acting and good class feels.
Even less. Make the quests longer but every 2 levels. It’s all the benefits of artifacts but without being tied to power. They could maybe give us a new awesome baseline ability at max level that’s now just baked into the class
Wouldn’t be the first time the geniuses tried making something that lasts longer than 5 minutes only to realized they’ve fucked up. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Here's a thought about how to handle Hero talents through the world soul saga. War within – we get the Base of what we're being shown now. 2 chooses per spec. Midnight – the 3rd becomes available for ur spec. So now what ever spec you are, u can do any of the 3 hero builds. Last Titan – now that we have all 3 the choice come in as u can have 2 active at once.
That limits the scope overall with where they go with it at least for the next 3 expansion.
I acknowledge the problems here. Just a thought though
War Within is the first WoW Expansion I did not pre-order right away. I am more curious if they will add more, or will they replace it with an entirely new system… again. If they don't replace it, will they keep extending the systems until they have to scrap everything? The main thing I loved of DF was the talent trees. Now I feel they are ruining that. Hero talents, then Heroic Talents, then Mythic Talents, then legendary talents, then wiping the slate clean and getting rid of the good talent system again much like after they scrapped the original talent trees.
I miss the Talent Tree system prior to Cataclysm. There were a lot more options and they were based on the type. I preferred Warrior so you had Fury, Arms and Defense. Defense had healing abilities while Fury had damage bonuses. On top of that once you leveled up high enough you could have the benefits of choosing talents from other talent trees.
I miss that and wish they never simplified it in Cataclysm.
Still INSANE to me how Class Orders, along with Mage Tower, were one of the best received features of modern WoW done in the name of "class/spec fantasy" and they just totally fuckin dropped them.
The idea of only 2-3 talents instead of 11 I think would be a good idea… I hate, really hate, any talent that just says "Increase/Decrease <DMG/Healing/DmgTaken> by X %"… Because i know in my head that when they increased damage by x% which means DPS went up, which means creature worth Y hit points died in Z min/sec that all Blizzard actually did was also increase the average hit points of said creature meaning that it now takes the same amount of time to kill the creature…. So that nothing at all really changed.
It's one of the reason I actually don't see any damage or healing numbers on my screen at all (in combat), only health% numbers. I do have Details! so I do see DPS and numbers and what not, they are good for data and decision making. Especially when comparing 2 specs of the same class to learn strengths and weaknesses. I still want to do the biggest heals and do the most damage… But to "me".. Doing 100 damage to something that has 100,000 health, and doing 100,000 damage to something that has 100,000,000 health are the, exact, same, thing. I know psychologically big number is good. But to me, it is all just the same.
So in the end, "all" of the increase damage style talents do, almost, nothing at all. It was "one" of the arguments for the talent tree system we had a few years ago. Why make a talent for Rogues that says +5% crit, if 99.999% of the rogues have it. Just make Rogues all have +5% crit for being a rogue and make a single talent that had meaning. Do I like the fact we change to these talent tress, yes I like these better. But they are still just as bloated as classic and half of them pointless just to fill up space. Make them half as big and meaningful, and give 1 point every other level instead.
Not to mention they all suck! I don’t want more proc based dmg or healing. Just let my abilities do what they do. I don’t want to have four different ways to proc some off brand effect that is stronger than the actual skill because they had to nerf the main skill because of all the procs they put on it. Ref Venrukis frostbolt video from shadowlands. It’s just dumb, and this makes it worse for everyone.
They should just add to the existing talent trees and fine-tune them instead of adding another tree that forces classes to play around a specific spell or style. For class fantasy, they should just add a ton of glyphs to change spell visuals as well as transmogs and barbershop options.
"We got rid of the original talent trees because adding to them every expansion is unsustainable." "We brought back talent trees for Dragonflight because we can always add to them through future expansions."
The plan is blatantly obvious. Bring back the positives of borrowed power while mitigating the negatives. These hero talents are the rollout but the system in the future will work quite simply. New expansion = 1 (maybe 2 here or there for a single class, or if an expansion theme allows like light vs void) new hero spec per class. All the achievements tied to raiding for that expansion will require the use of that expansions hero talents. This allows them to give players new toys every expansion while more or less ignoring long term balance fixes as only the most recent hero talents will 'count' for the recognition.
More casual players can use more busted hero talents from any time, and mix and match effects in order to farm gear with what blizzard will consider 'no impact' to hardcore raid progression. While raids can be shipped while only being concerned about the balance of the talents/items that are current. The tag line will likely be "We're taking the 'borrowed' out of 'borrowed power'" for the PR speak. The funny thing is that this will probably even work from a balance and design standpoint, but won't do a thing to help WoW at all as it's problems don't stem from balance or game design because those have never been in a good place.
What is more likely to happen is fracturing the community even further with 99.999% of the player base just using the most busted builds to farm and learn the fight and then possibly giving a 'legit' clear a try at the end of the season, and the rest doing the race for world first.
They're a lot like Elite Specializations in Guild Wars.. I think they're far more "evergreen" than any edition or rendition of the talent tree we've ever had. Maybe instead of playing through stories for levels, we'll just do it to unlock new hero talent trees. And for the story of course, assuming it's good enough and told well.
Or 3 years from now I'll be eating my own shit.. maybe even sooner!
I made this exact point on Max’s tier list video of the released hero talents. I was really looking forward to knowing how they intended to “eternalize” the game at Blizzcon. I like what Hero Talents are trying to do, bringing in more Warcraft 3 lore and class fantasy. But they just kick the borrowed power can down the road. I know hearing “we will iterate on 70-point talent trees and give you a 4 set every season” isn’t as exciting, but that is basically what they need to do.
I still wish for creativity in class designs. What if an elemental shaman could channel on a lightning totem to build up a charge, the longer they channel the money charge they get. Channel all at once or do it in short bursts in between casts. Different lightning abilities would use different amounts of charge and some could be used in multiple charge levels (ie. similar to that new evoker ability use type). Or maybe while they have some charge on them it also acts as the lightning shield.
Would be a lot more interesting to me than traditional builder/spender designs because I can visualize where the lightning charge is coming from. I haven’t a clue what maelstrom power is… just a number.
Come on Blizzard, Guild Wars 2 already showed you how.
Traits are passive abilities that modify and enhance character's skills and provide bonuses to damage and attributes. Traits are grouped into and selected as part of specializations, also known as trait lines. Each class has access to five core specializations and three elite specializations; the latter available with their respective expansions. Only three specializations can be equipped at a time, and only one of them can be an elite specialization. Each specialization provides 12 traits, of which 6 can be active at the same time. Guild Wars 2 wiki
Hero specs will make class balance slower. Got a problem ability or talent in a spec tree? At the moment they can "just" tune it to make the problem go away. With hero talents they need to tune it, go over to the hero spec and tune any abilities that are dependent on it to prevent unforeseen snowballing in either direction, then they need to look at what the rebalanced hero talent looks like afterwards and go over to the sister spec and rebalance it to match any power changes that came from the hero talent being changed.
Not to mention that any player that even slightly values player power has a reason to worry about being "locked in" to either hero tree since Blizzard has been historically fine with power swings of up to 20% dps seen as within reasonable limits, see legion random legendaries. At that point it really isn't much of a choice for many players, and between so many classes, specs and activities there are bound to be large gaps for some. Single digit percentage points can be overcome by skill and variance but double digit and it's just gimping yourself or trolling your team as you'd do better with the alternative with bare minimum competency.
I think it sounds cool.
I guess we'll see.
Simplicity and elegance of design… are not qualities Blizzard devs have ever been known for.
Maybe they should just accept, not everything has to more stats when it comes to classes, I think players would have been more happy with just some work on class lore and optional astatic changes to kits and abilities. The Murder hobos of azeroth have plenty of buttons to kill things, just focus on making us look cool doing it.
It's going to be a nightmare to balance. Blizzard shooting themselves in the foot again. The game doesn't need more talents, just better itemization that doesn't age like milk.
More than 429 actually because of choice nodes.
Imagine, instead a talent point every level. We instead got class quests. One for each hero spec (spec specific quests)
And when you complete the quest line you got the cosmetics…and we got that Instead of new talents. Instead of 429 talents they will need to maintain for the full expansion…429 quests with voice acting and good class feels.
Even less. Make the quests longer but every 2 levels. It’s all the benefits of artifacts but without being tied to power. They could maybe give us a new awesome baseline ability at max level that’s now just baked into the class
we know you do this for engagement and content. just play another game guys. it's ok.
I still don't get why people freak out about hero talents. It's just more talents.
Wouldn’t be the first time the geniuses tried making something that lasts longer than 5 minutes only to realized they’ve fucked up. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Here's a thought about how to handle Hero talents through the world soul saga.
War within – we get the Base of what we're being shown now. 2 chooses per spec.
Midnight – the 3rd becomes available for ur spec. So now what ever spec you are, u can do any of the 3 hero builds.
Last Titan – now that we have all 3 the choice come in as u can have 2 active at once.
That limits the scope overall with where they go with it at least for the next 3 expansion.
I acknowledge the problems here. Just a thought though
Ok, but where is the sword master, rune master, sea sage, necromancer, etc?
War Within is the first WoW Expansion I did not pre-order right away. I am more curious if they will add more, or will they replace it with an entirely new system… again. If they don't replace it, will they keep extending the systems until they have to scrap everything? The main thing I loved of DF was the talent trees. Now I feel they are ruining that. Hero talents, then Heroic Talents, then Mythic Talents, then legendary talents, then wiping the slate clean and getting rid of the good talent system again much like after they scrapped the original talent trees.
I miss the Talent Tree system prior to Cataclysm.
There were a lot more options and they were based on the type. I preferred Warrior so you had Fury, Arms and Defense. Defense had healing abilities while Fury had damage bonuses. On top of that once you leveled up high enough you could have the benefits of choosing talents from other talent trees.
I miss that and wish they never simplified it in Cataclysm.
This just reinforces that Class Skins would've been the better route.
They'll add 10 Hero talent points each expansion untill we hit lvl 100 and 31/30/30 talent points. At that point they'll do level squish to lvl 50.
Still INSANE to me how Class Orders, along with Mage Tower, were one of the best received features of modern WoW done in the name of "class/spec fantasy" and they just totally fuckin dropped them.
WHY
Can we get some more buttons to click too? I don't have enough buttons to click. 🤣
The idea of only 2-3 talents instead of 11 I think would be a good idea… I hate, really hate, any talent that just says "Increase/Decrease <DMG/Healing/DmgTaken> by X %"… Because i know in my head that when they increased damage by x% which means DPS went up, which means creature worth Y hit points died in Z min/sec that all Blizzard actually did was also increase the average hit points of said creature meaning that it now takes the same amount of time to kill the creature…. So that nothing at all really changed.
It's one of the reason I actually don't see any damage or healing numbers on my screen at all (in combat), only health% numbers. I do have Details! so I do see DPS and numbers and what not, they are good for data and decision making. Especially when comparing 2 specs of the same class to learn strengths and weaknesses. I still want to do the biggest heals and do the most damage… But to "me".. Doing 100 damage to something that has 100,000 health, and doing 100,000 damage to something that has 100,000,000 health are the, exact, same, thing. I know psychologically big number is good. But to me, it is all just the same.
So in the end, "all" of the increase damage style talents do, almost, nothing at all. It was "one" of the arguments for the talent tree system we had a few years ago. Why make a talent for Rogues that says +5% crit, if 99.999% of the rogues have it. Just make Rogues all have +5% crit for being a rogue and make a single talent that had meaning. Do I like the fact we change to these talent tress, yes I like these better. But they are still just as bloated as classic and half of them pointless just to fill up space. Make them half as big and meaningful, and give 1 point every other level instead.
This channel has decided its entire personality is hating hero talents lol
Not to mention they all suck! I don’t want more proc based dmg or healing. Just let my abilities do what they do. I don’t want to have four different ways to proc some off brand effect that is stronger than the actual skill because they had to nerf the main skill because of all the procs they put on it. Ref Venrukis frostbolt video from shadowlands. It’s just dumb, and this makes it worse for everyone.
They should just add to the existing talent trees and fine-tune them instead of adding another tree that forces classes to play around a specific spell or style. For class fantasy, they should just add a ton of glyphs to change spell visuals as well as transmogs and barbershop options.
Blizzard in BfA: add 4 abilities per class. Absolute balance nightmare…
Blizzard: Surely adding hundreds more will make it easier!
"We got rid of the original talent trees because adding to them every expansion is unsustainable."
"We brought back talent trees for Dragonflight because we can always add to them through future expansions."
…HUH?!
The plan is blatantly obvious. Bring back the positives of borrowed power while mitigating the negatives. These hero talents are the rollout but the system in the future will work quite simply. New expansion = 1 (maybe 2 here or there for a single class, or if an expansion theme allows like light vs void) new hero spec per class. All the achievements tied to raiding for that expansion will require the use of that expansions hero talents. This allows them to give players new toys every expansion while more or less ignoring long term balance fixes as only the most recent hero talents will 'count' for the recognition.
More casual players can use more busted hero talents from any time, and mix and match effects in order to farm gear with what blizzard will consider 'no impact' to hardcore raid progression. While raids can be shipped while only being concerned about the balance of the talents/items that are current. The tag line will likely be "We're taking the 'borrowed' out of 'borrowed power'" for the PR speak. The funny thing is that this will probably even work from a balance and design standpoint, but won't do a thing to help WoW at all as it's problems don't stem from balance or game design because those have never been in a good place.
What is more likely to happen is fracturing the community even further with 99.999% of the player base just using the most busted builds to farm and learn the fight and then possibly giving a 'legit' clear a try at the end of the season, and the rest doing the race for world first.
Of all the complaints people had with WoW, I dont think "not enough talents" was one of them
Just give up on this shit idea and make the class skins and flavor items for the Hero classes.
More complexity and more bloat.
That face when you realize that "The War Within" was Chris Metzen beating Steve Daneuser with a potato in a sock.
They're a lot like Elite Specializations in Guild Wars.. I think they're far more "evergreen" than any edition or rendition of the talent tree we've ever had. Maybe instead of playing through stories for levels, we'll just do it to unlock new hero talent trees. And for the story of course, assuming it's good enough and told well.
Or 3 years from now I'll be eating my own shit.. maybe even sooner!
I made this exact point on Max’s tier list video of the released hero talents. I was really looking forward to knowing how they intended to “eternalize” the game at Blizzcon. I like what Hero Talents are trying to do, bringing in more Warcraft 3 lore and class fantasy. But they just kick the borrowed power can down the road. I know hearing “we will iterate on 70-point talent trees and give you a 4 set every season” isn’t as exciting, but that is basically what they need to do.
I still wish for creativity in class designs. What if an elemental shaman could channel on a lightning totem to build up a charge, the longer they channel the money charge they get. Channel all at once or do it in short bursts in between casts. Different lightning abilities would use different amounts of charge and some could be used in multiple charge levels (ie. similar to that new evoker ability use type). Or maybe while they have some charge on them it also acts as the lightning shield.
Would be a lot more interesting to me than traditional builder/spender designs because I can visualize where the lightning charge is coming from. I haven’t a clue what maelstrom power is… just a number.
Imagine if they put all this work into just making the current talents better?
Most of the stuff that they do is "if it ain't broke let's fix it"….
At least it's a semi functional litmus test of sorts
Come on Blizzard, Guild Wars 2 already showed you how.
Traits are passive abilities that modify and enhance character's skills and provide bonuses to damage and attributes. Traits are grouped into and selected as part of specializations, also known as trait lines. Each class has access to five core specializations and three elite specializations; the latter available with their respective expansions. Only three specializations can be equipped at a time, and only one of them can be an elite specialization. Each specialization provides 12 traits, of which 6 can be active at the same time. Guild Wars 2 wiki
Bellular Warcraft videos: 😄
Bellular Clips videos: 🤬
I'd love to know why Michael is always in several layers, while Matt is always in a t-shirt.
Hero specs will make class balance slower.
Got a problem ability or talent in a spec tree? At the moment they can "just" tune it to make the problem go away.
With hero talents they need to tune it, go over to the hero spec and tune any abilities that are dependent on it to prevent unforeseen snowballing in either direction, then they need to look at what the rebalanced hero talent looks like afterwards and go over to the sister spec and rebalance it to match any power changes that came from the hero talent being changed.
Not to mention that any player that even slightly values player power has a reason to worry about being "locked in" to either hero tree since Blizzard has been historically fine with power swings of up to 20% dps seen as within reasonable limits, see legion random legendaries. At that point it really isn't much of a choice for many players, and between so many classes, specs and activities there are bound to be large gaps for some. Single digit percentage points can be overcome by skill and variance but double digit and it's just gimping yourself or trolling your team as you'd do better with the alternative with bare minimum competency.