One month later:
Raid Leader to the raid: "Please all download 'MyBestSpecc' from Curse and keep it updated. It automatically adjusts your talents depending on which boss we are at!"
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I could leave it at what The Grumpy Elf said about those new talents. Or what Eldergame wrote.
But I decided to go through an example: The new druid talents.
Level 15
Feral PvP: Displacer Beast, because it keeps you alive.
Non-Feral PvP: Tireless Pursuit, because it keeps you alive while allowing you to cast.
Feral PvE: Feline Swiftness, and Tireless Pursuit if you only need to sprint every 3 minutes.
Non-Feral PvE: Feline Swiftness, to move faster while casting.
Level 30
Feral PvP: Nature's Swiftness, because it's more versatile than Renewal.
Non-Feral PvP: Nature's Swiftness, because speed matters.
Feral PvE: Renewal, for higher survivability. The other options reduce dps.
Healer PvE: Cenarion Ward increases your output.
Moonkin PvE: Renewal, for higher survivability and because Cenarion Ward costs mana.
Level 45
Feral PvP: Faerie Swarm, for more damage, a ranged snare and against cloakers.
Non-Feral PvP: Typhoon, because it is instant and keeps players at range no matter what damage they take.
Feral PvE: Faerie Swarm, because the rest is completely useless.
Non-Feral PvE: Typhoon, because it is instant. But you won't use it much.
Level 60
Feral PvP: Incarnation for 30 seconds of ravaging and more survival.
Healer PvP: Incarnation for more survivability and output.
Moonkin PvP: Depending on the HP and dps of the treants Force of Nature or Wild Charge for more burst.
Bear PvE: Wild Charge for more mobility and because the rest is useless for you.
Cat PvE: Incarnation for more dps due to ravaging.
Healer PvE: Incarnation for more output.
Moonkin PvE: Depending on the HP and dps of the treants Force of Nature or Wild Charge for more burst.
Level 75
PvP: Demoralizing Roar if you fight more than one enemy. Otherwise Bear Hug.
Bear PvE: Ursol's Vortex to better tank groups of mobs.
Cat PvE: Demoralizing Roar for some utility.
Non-Feral PvE: Demoralizing Roar, because the rest is even worse. This gives you a bit more survavability.
Level 90
Feral PvP: Disentanglement !!
Non-Feral PvP: Disentanglement !!
Bear PvE: Heart of the Wild for more survivability.
Cat PvE: Heart of the Wild or Master Shapeshifter depending on what does more dps (theorycrafting).
Non-Feral PvE: Heart of the Wild for more healing output.
This constant struggle at Blizzard for more meaning without adding consequence is really starting to bore me!
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Just downloading several gigabytes of Rift updates. You might see a few Rift movies soon until Skyrim is released in three weeks :)
About 90 "Bear PvE: Heart of the Wild for more survivability"
ReplyDeleteRemember that the Freal bonus is not the tank bonus.
The tank spec is now called Guardian and druids have 4 specs so we still dont know what the talent will do for bears.
What's wrong with adjusting your skill for every boss? There are only 6 skills so it might very well be part of preparation for a boss. This is no longer the RP character sheet which developps your character into one direction and locks it into that. It's only something to add some diversity.
ReplyDeleteIn Guild Wars it's normal to pick your spells before every scenario. It's part of the game to select the spells you're going to use for your next fight.
Chaning your 6 skills for every boss is no different then equipping fire resistence for some bosses.
I think that if you're going to judge the new system you should judge it as a new system. And not an evolution of the talent trees. Because it's something new.
There's nothing wrong with it, Kring, if that is a design goal. Do you think it is?
ReplyDeleteBesides, they should add templates that automatically switch your hotbars and make switching cost nothing if this is the design goal.
Latest Classes, Item, Professions Q&A Panel
ReplyDeleteQuestion: New talents will still be cookie cutter, how is this new?
Answer: Most give utility choices rather than damage, this can't be number crunched. We will continue to balance them to make them hard choices.
> There's nothing wrong with it, Kring, if that is
ReplyDelete> a design goal. Do you think it is?
I liked the vanilla talent trees the most. The trees were full of bad talents (which was a problem) but there were a lot of cherry-picking specs. Yes, it was quite obvious for a warlock to skill 30/0/21 because the 31 point affliction talent was total crap. But you felt smart by noticing (or reading it up) that ruin was better then dark pact. And other classes had even more obscure templates. But the vanilla trees were not balanced enough and wouldn't work anymore in a time of Simulationcraft and "perfect dance endgame".
The 41 and 51 point talent trees were just to big and bloated. It was a good decision to go back to 31 point trees.
The Cata trees were crap because you had a lot to pick but no actual choice. You had 41 point and about 39 were fixed by the "correct" skill. Then you had about 2 points to spend freely. 2 points were a choice, 39 were a calculation. What a bad design. And to make it worse, the 2 "choice points" were spent in your off-trees. How silly is that that the only choice are how you spend point in your off-tree and the points in your main tree are all calculations?
Because you were forced to put 31 points in your main tree, which is about every talent available there, you never felt smart.
I welcome the removal of the current talent system even if the new "talents" are changed for every boss. It has the chance to make you feel smart again!
Druid is a bad example because they can pick from 3 talents for 4 specs. Take a look at warlock and I'm sure the best choice will depend on the boss you fight.
http://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2011/october/talents_warlock.jpg
> Besides, they should add templates that automatically switch
> your hotbars and make switching cost nothing if this is the
> design goal.
They, being Blizzard, will, of course, completely fuck up this part and make it a major pain and require an add-on that breakes with every patch.
So, yes, I agree.
Quick note - if you're visually impaired or otherwise find it hard to read the screenshot versions of the talents (I know I do), we've got a transcription of the Druid talents over at the Melting Pot.
ReplyDelete(Hope you don't mind me butting in, Nils - I found reading the talents off screenshot gave me a headache after a while.)
I don't mind Hugh. And I respect the work you've done. But at the same time I wonder whether you ever used the zoom function of your browser before? The screenshots seem to be quite sufficient to me ;)
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, my whole blog is probably difficult to read on most larger screens without a zoom .. :)