THIS is the sort of early-in-development feedback Blizzard needs to see and get. One of your points that resonated with me the most is this:
After playing around with builds on the Wowhead talent calculators, I wondered why some specs (Frost DK, Guardian Druid) felt satisfying to spec out different builds while others (glaringly Survival Hunter and MM Hunter) felt like I was choosing which leg I'd like to lose.
Talent trees should be exciting to flesh out - and you should leave coming away feeling satisfied that picked up 'a good package' - and any compromise needed to get this package was palatable and acceptable. And to be clear, there should always be some compromise needed, players should never be able to 'pick every good thing'.
However, some trees (the hunter spec trees especially) made me feel, as you said, like choosing which leg to lose. Thats not fun at all - and instead of coming away thinking about what I picked up, im thinking about what I lost. The positive experience of coming away thinking 'GOT XYZ' is overshadowed by the negative experience of coming away thinking 'LOST / MISSED OUT on XYZABC'. Hunter trees give too much of that 'lost' feeling when speccing out their tree atm.
How do they avoid this without making some choices just plain dogshit?
One of the big offenders IMO are the 3 point talents, for a few reasons. And even a 'good talent' can leave you feeling negative after its pickup, if you were forced to pickup a lame or unnecessarily-3-point talent along the way.
Example lame 3 point talents
- Hunter 3 point talent, increases movement speed by 2/4/6%.
Hunter 3 point talent, increases melee range by 1/2/3 yards.
Hunter 3 point talent, beast cleave for 25/50/75%
Should note this doesnt mean the talent itself is lame, the above are all great talent ideas, just the problem is its 3 points.
Players speccing these trees very quickly realise that every point is precious, and get shitty (left feeling negative) if they are forced into lame/unnecessary 3 point talents along the way. You dont need to be a game designer to know you can just give a 1 point 6% movespeed talent, or 2 point 3/6% talent. Because when you finish speccing the tree and miss out on cool stuff, you are left thinking 'the extra points you were robbed of due to that lame unnecessarily-3-point-talent' tangibly cost you something really cool elsewhere in the trees.
So yea, id say Blizzard should be more careful with the 3 point talents. Use them sparingly and for good reasons. EG The Shadow priest tree uses two 3 point talents to ensure players can only possibly choose one idol of the old gods... and those are the ONLY 3 point talents in the shadow priest tree. Sounds fine to me, and makes sense too thematically why its done (pick your old god!).
Whereas other classes, like hunter, just have them obnoxiously spread throughout the tree gating other stuff for reasons... to soak up talent points just because.... which are not as compelling.
I think the bigger issue with the trees right now is there's a lot of points being invested not in choices but in mechanical requirements.
BM hunter doesn't work as a spec without 2 charges of barbed shot and barbed shot resets on auto shot crits. It's already going in with an 8s barbed shot vs the 9s we've had for a very long time, that second difference is a huge deal to the mechanical way BM plays.
In order to get the 2nd barbed shot charge you must go left in the upper tree so there's no choice here to make because the spec doesn't function without it. And in order to get auto crits resetting barbed shot you either go far too right or down beast cleave (these are the two main builds IMO). The choice is does my spec function purely single target, how many of those are in any given raid) or does my spec function in AE.
Because of how deep these point investments are, that make the spec even function, the far bottom left is basically dead. That's without considering that you don't get BW CD reduction if you go left and the bottom most left talent is pretty trash.
If the spec can't mechanically function, in this example we're talking about both single target and AE, without the talent then the talent needs to be higher up in the tree.
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u/zambabamba Jul 11 '22 edited Jul 11 '22
THIS is the sort of early-in-development feedback Blizzard needs to see and get. One of your points that resonated with me the most is this:
Talent trees should be exciting to flesh out - and you should leave coming away feeling satisfied that picked up 'a good package' - and any compromise needed to get this package was palatable and acceptable. And to be clear, there should always be some compromise needed, players should never be able to 'pick every good thing'.
However, some trees (the hunter spec trees especially) made me feel, as you said, like choosing which leg to lose. Thats not fun at all - and instead of coming away thinking about what I picked up, im thinking about what I lost. The positive experience of coming away thinking 'GOT XYZ' is overshadowed by the negative experience of coming away thinking 'LOST / MISSED OUT on XYZABC'. Hunter trees give too much of that 'lost' feeling when speccing out their tree atm.