wow Blue Posts Roundup: Jun 3

[Stan 5,240]

The latest collection of blue posts includes a discussion about old talent trees, upcoming Holy Priest changes on Beta, and canceled Uldir raid testing.

Old Talent Trees

According to Ythisens, old talent trees only created an illusion of choice and he believes that the new ones are better, because they offer more impactful choices and utility.

Blizzard (Source)

For me the most annoying thing I hear is when people say the older talent trees were better and gave more choices when we all know it was really an illusion of choice given that for the most part was very cookie cutter. I do admit though that the good thing about them was it felt like you were continuously rewarded every level but the idea that they gave more "choice" wasn't really accurate given how it naturally filtered into set builds. I firmly believe that the modern talent trees are better in the since that your choices do feel very impactful and they overall give you far more utility than the original trees did. Being able to adjust my toolkit slightly to fill a certain niche feels really good when it does happen and its something that I feel very engaged on trying to figure out.

Just an extra note this is a good thread but let's try to keep it civil here and avoid the name calling.

Yes, I do agree with you, to a point. For PvE, you betcha.

I didn't PvP that much until after the talent revamp so you might be right in that you could create some quirky builds that were fun.

If the early talent trees weren't impactful then why were there "set builds" using them?

While I implied it I didn't directly say that, however you can have set builds and still feel like the decisions you're making aren't that impactful as a whole. It becomes more of a situation of "these builds work so you pretty much have to do this as anything else isn't as viable". Versus me deciding to change up a choice of say what kind of Beacon talent to use (I know they aren't all like this but its an example).

I do miss having actual points to spend in talents (not necessarily having so many talents themselves) to make an ability stronger.

Yeah that is the only thing I actually miss about them. It was nice feeling like you were continually rewarded even though it majority of the time was something simple like "2% more Shadow Word: Pain damage" or "1% more Stamina" >.>

Holy Priest Feedback

Apotheosis (Holy Priest level 100 talent) will be changed in a future Beta build.

• Duration: 20 secs (down from 30), cooldown: 2 min (down from 3 min), bonus: 300% (up from 200%).

Blizzard (Source)

We've seen a lot of feedback on Apotheosis (and level 100 generally) after the talent swap. 2 changes in next build:

--Duration 20s and cooldown 2min (from 30s and 3min). The shorter cooldown is likely worth a lot more than 10s of added duration, in terms of how you usually want to use it to deliver strong healing for a situation that doesn't necessarily last 30 seconds.

--The bonus is +300% rather than +200%. This matches the strength that it has on live when Light of the Naaru is taken. Apotheosis didn't need to be weakened outright, and can have the synergy with Light of the Naaru baked in, now that you can't take both.

Uldir LFR Testing Canceled

Blizzard ran into some issues with Uldir that's why LFR testing got canceled.

Blizzard (Source)

We've encountered a number of issues with triggers that is causing several bosses to not function and in some cases to not spawn. We've unfortunately had to cancel the test for this weekend due to these issues.

[Durf24 42]

LFR is a mistake anyway

[Nazamber 38]

16 hours ago, Stan said:

Blizzard (Source)

For me the most annoying thing I hear is when people say the older talent trees were better and gave more choices when we all know it was really an illusion of choice given that for the most part was very cookie cutter. I do admit though that the good thing about them was it felt like you were continuously rewarded every level but the idea that they gave more "choice" wasn't really accurate given how it naturally filtered into set builds. I firmly believe that the modern talent trees are better in the since that your choices do feel very impactful and they overall give you far more utility than the original trees did. Being able to adjust my toolkit slightly to fill a certain niche feels really good when it does happen and its something that I feel very engaged on trying to figure out.

I kind of disagree with this.

As a Warrior, I remember tapping into the  trees and not really having to get the last talent. I remember doing a 19/0/32 build for improved Heroic Strike / Rend to maintain threat...or then a 10/10/31 build for PvP and Tiered tanking. I also remember doing a mix of Fury and Arms and a Fury / Prot build since Fury had some terrible survival issues thanks to Berserker Stance but the best part about that is I had the choice to either go survival fury or straight kill or be killed mode. With Prot, I went straight tank mode so that i could survive some heavy mechanics but after getting  the 8-set bonuses on Tier gear, I would go a makeshift damage build, since gear helped you last more than it does now.

In regards to talents now, I think he is right they do impact us...but that's only if you don't go the linear path which was caused in Legion from Legendaries and Tier. Many classes during Legion suffered the legendary/tier build model which caused people to constantly switch the preferred talents versus their playstyle. I mean without a doubt, if you don't really want to hit the charts, then by all means play with the talents but if your are end-game pveing and doing M+ or N-M Raids, you're most likely going with the preferred choice versus what you want.

[Allseye 96]

4 hours ago, Nazamber said:

I kind of disagree with this.

As a Warrior, I remember tapping into the  trees and not really having to get the last talent. I remember doing a 19/0/32 build for improved Heroic Strike / Rend to maintain threat...or then a 10/10/31 build for PvP and Tiered tanking. I also remember doing a mix of Fury and Arms and a Fury / Prot build since Fury had some terrible survival issues thanks to Berserker Stance but the best part about that is I had the choice to either go survival fury or straight kill or be killed mode. With Prot, I went straight tank mode so that i could survive some heavy mechanics but after getting  the 8-set bonuses on Tier gear, I would go a makeshift damage build, since gear helped you last more than it does now.

In regards to talents now, I think he is right they do impact us...but that's only if you don't go the linear path which was caused in Legion from Legendaries and Tier. Many classes during Legion suffered the legendary/tier build model which caused people to constantly switch the preferred talents versus their playstyle. I mean without a doubt, if you don't really want to hit the charts, then by all means play with the talents but if your are end-game pveing and doing M+ or N-M Raids, you're most likely going with the preferred choice versus what you want.

Its such a long time for me to really do a comparison between old and new talent "trees". But in my view, there were as many choice as we have today. So i agree with you, in Legion there is basically "a way to go" ... but we also had it in old talent trees. No big difference for me. But i can't say older was better...it just felt more excited or somehow like that.

[jinsu2301 273]

I hate it when the meta becomes more important to people than the gameplay. I played feral druid with Sabertooth even though it is, and I quote "worse in almost all situations now, and despite it making the rotation slightly easier, is not really recommended in any situation." Yet, not only was it only about 2% worse than the go-to talent in raidbot, but because I found it to be much more enjoyable than the other two choices, I actually did much better than going with the cookie cutter build. Same happened to me with other specs/classes.

Sure, if you are in the WF or server first race, or you are pushing high M+, you wanna take every little advantage. But the problem comes when people who barely understand how their class or the game in general works get told that their main problem is that they don't follow the meta.

[Seksi 208]

There's always a meta, but indeed most of the talents are pretty close to each other and some make your rotation much easier to perform, to the point that a lazier / lesser skilled player might even get much better results with off-meta talents as they can focus better on moving out of the fire and maximizing their simplified toolkit.

Best way is to read guides to know the meta and hopefully understand what each talent does and then try things out for yourself if you dislike it / disagree with the popular opinion!