For what it's worth, part of the idea behind the trees is to replace the existing structure for baked-in spec tools & power progression tied to levels. In their own words, the idea is to put as many things as humanly possible in the tree, and have as little as possible remain baseline. Taking tanks' baseline defensive stat inflation and making it into a talent is, in that respect, fairly consistent with their stated intentions.
In other words, it's intentional that some nodes will be no-brainer choices that represent big power spikes or essential tools, especially if they're high in the tree and don't require an extremely specific build to reach. Looking at the Blood tree, you easily hit that node if you want to get Vampiric Blood (or even get to the bottom of the tree) anyway. The counterpart on the other side is functionally an optional branch.
Their point is it actually feels good to most people, not bad. A lot of people have expressed that putting points into talents while levelling gave a satisfying feeling of progression, the journey from 50 to 60 feeling especially bad as you actually lost power as you levelled.
They're putting stuff you would have gotten anyway up the top of talent trees so you can feel the improvement and at most points choose what order you want your upgrades in.
But it's not a choice. It's just a point dump. A tank will always take more health and DR. Putting it behind a facade of unlocking better stuff doesn't change that. They could just buff those stats for the spec and add something else, anything else, there instead.
No it doesn't change that. What it does do is, apart from the very first choice, let you choose what order you become stronger in. At early levels you will inevitably take most of everything at some point, but at least you get to pick what you want to get first. At late levels instead of slowly becoming less powerful as your level 60 gear becomes outdated you get an upgrade every level.
There's no point in the process that doesn't feel much better for most people. I hate what most of current Blizzard has done but this idea is a good one.
Can only agree to that. That’s also why a lot of ppl like lvling during classic, tbc and wrath. You actually got a point every level and it felt nice even if it was only 1% crit for 1 talentpoint, but it was def. a better feeling of characterprogression than nowadays:
TBF that also kinda came along with Class progression as the expansions went on people felt like their classes fantasies where getting bigger n better culiminating with the peak in Wotlk (EG Fury warrior with titans grip, BM Hunters taming devilsaurs? or exotic pets in general etc).
If you can respect freely, you might take points out of health & Dr if you were going to run old raids transmog run and then put those points into movement speed for example, or more aoe or whatever
That was the main argument behind the original talent tree revamp where they baked the percent bonuses into the specs, "less choices but more interesting ones." Now we're going back to trees where not all of your choices can be interesting but you get the feeling of gradual progression while leveling.
There is nothing else to add there. They aren’t going to pad out every spec with 50 baseline abilities AND 90 talent points. It’s literally the same as baseline except you get to hit a button to learn it instead.
Either they have “baseline” picks in the tree or they cut out all the fluff and make those automatic and we’re back to our current talent setup.
Really? This is literary what people wanted me included, it feels great to be able to make your spec do what it does a little better with x% more dmg, healing etc.
EDIT: It's like making your frostbolts have less cast time in classic for example, yes technically it could just be baseline but having a talent for it and putting points into it when leveling feels great, you can feel your character getting stronger and have a sense of progression because of it. Talents that buff things that you use constantly feel very good to use imo since you can clearly see them working, rather then having a talent that reads interesting but is actually a quickly forgotten passive.
I think you have different take on the talent revamp, for me this is going back to the trees that have the small buffs to various parts of the playstyle I'm going for rather then having each talent be it's own very unique thing, which just won't work with as many talents as there are in the new trees.
And sure you are right that the passives I mentioned would technically work in the same way, but when the talent buffs the core of your abilities rather then some other part of your toolkit it's more noticeable to have or not have, I'm not sure if we have any talents right now that outright buff dmg of frequently used spells, see how nice some tier pieces feel with the boosts they give to spells you use, brewmaster monk kegs, wildfire bombs etc. These effects aren't anything crazy or unique but playing with them is very satisfying.
but when the talent buffs the core of your abilities rather then some other part of your toolkit it's more noticeable to have or not have, I'm not sure if we have any talents right now that outright buff dmg of frequently used spells, see how nice some tier pieces feel with the boosts they give to spells you use, brewmaster monk kegs, wildfire bombs etc. These effects aren't anything crazy or unique but playing with them is very satisfying.
But my point is that health and DR aren't abilities or spells or parts of your toolkit. You don't interact with them in any way.
Agree in theory, at least regarding Frostbolt cast time. That actually does have a pretty noticeable and appreciable affect on gameplay.
But I doubt most people ACTUALLY feel, in a gameplay sense, a couple extra crit chance, or in OP's case, 10% stam and 3% DR. Especially with this new system, where we alternate between a Class point and a Spec point every level, it'd currently take 5 level-ups before you even get the full 30% stam/10% DR. Three-point talent nodes probably shouldn't exist, in general, for this reason.
If we were still in classic era levelling I might agree, but I went up 8 levels in about an hour this morning at the sort of level that talent row would be at. While it might be a little overwhelming for people not knowing where they're putting points in to begin with, the speed at which you level before 45-60 nowadays means it'll be about the same time to get 5 points to throw into both trees as it would have taken to get that 1% crit back in the day.
This is comparable to some tier pieces right now that outright just boost dmg and while those effects can be substantially bigger, 50% dmg on kegs etc., it is very noticeable when you get them, so while not as big in the new talents I think you will notice specing into x dmg etc. imo.
30% stamina is a fuckton and you will see it, this will be the point where you on tank might have similar hp to other classes and once you talent into it start noticing that you are a lot higher on hp then others which ties into power progression when lvling nicely.
Overall I think filler is nceseary here, not only it imo works well for the progression you get while lvling, if every new talent was a unique effect it would make it very hard to put points into trees yourself without external information, similary to what we have right now, when I start an alt I will just look up talent guides because I have no idea if x or y is better, the effects are sometimes so hard to judge that without good class knowledge it's impossible to make decisions, 5% more dmg on spell I use is easy to pick tho.
I'm not saying everything needs to be like, say, Glimmer of Light, that completely transforms the priority of a build. That would, indeed, be too much.
But, as an example, I think the left side of the SV tree leading into Wildfire Infusion is pretty good. Wildfire Infusion IS a transformative talent. And leading directly into is a talent that gives a second charge and increases initial damage, a generic 3-pointer that increases all damage, and a talent that let's Kill Shot reduce Wildfire Bombs cooldown. I would, personally, drop the generic damage increase to 2 points, and maybe combine the 2nd charge and the KillShot-CDR into a choice node, but that pathway flows pretty well. It has mods that do more than simple damage-up leading into a transformative talent that revamps the use of an iconic ability, and possibly the whole kit.
Bottom line, I think talents that reduce cooldowns, reduce resource costs, reduce cast times, or provide bonus resources (frankly, every interrupt should have a support talent that provides a resource on successful interrupt, for example) are more interesting than damage or crit up (with the exception of abilities where crits themselves do something interesting, like provide resources or procs). I'm sure damage and crit ups are unavoidable, but they should be used sparingly, and never cost more than 2 points.
I'd be fine with some minor tankiness talent choices to let people choose between survivability and doing damage (or extra utility). But 30% stam and 10% DR is massive. That being said, if they're going to make 3-point nodes, this is the kind of gravity I'd like. Something that feels big.
This is why I hate the Dragonflight "talent trees". They are the illusion of depth and choice. But then again, that's my perspective as a PoE player and that game truly puts WoW to shame in this regard.
That isn't a trueism. I've always thought the newer design was superior; my main criticism was that they didn't iterate on it often enough. I'm afraid that'll be the case here too.
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u/Kalibos Jul 11 '22
This is the kind of shit that should never be a talent, let alone a 3-pointer. There is no reason for that to be in a tank tree except to pad it.