WoW: Dragonflight

fangblackbone wrote:

Lol, how many versions of Dagron are going to show up on launch day?

I mean, it's either "Vargon," "Varvoker," or something that's sensible in a vacuum but leaves my guildmates with no idea that the new character is me.

Early on I had a lot of fun with hybrid specs for leveling and some casual PvP. But the fun came from deciding to forego the pinnacle Feral Druid damage dealing ability in favor of a strong instant-cast heal, not from durdling around with a % bonus here or there. That kind of fun got patched out when they stopped letting you split points until you'd maxxed out one tree, which was way before they switched to the current talent system. The fact that they want to keep some of the hybridization from the early days is heartening. Locking each spec to its own talent tree... well that'll come down to the individual talents.

It looks like the new trees are replacing both the talent system AND the character spellbook. That should give them enough interesting nodes to make this work. And it means people will be gaining new spells when they decide they want them. That could be a big improvement for the leveling game.

Honestly though, it's going to live or die by the quality of the tooltips. They've got to be good enough that I can make informed decisions without clicking over to Icy-Veins. I remember back in Burning Crusade I passed up on the "you are 1% less likely to be critically struck" talents because it seemed like that didn't really do that much. What they didn't tell me was the base rate was only around 5% and taking the full stack meant that I was immune to crits. I thought I would be taking 1% fewer critical hits per point, not 20% fewer.

replacing the spell book does sound a little better because at least you are then replacing a granular system rather than adding another one.
I am curious how it will work:
Are you locked to a spec?
Are you able to fill out all the spec trees and switch between them? (freely? in town?)
Are you able to do the hybrid where you can use more than one spec tree at the same time?
Is the class tree going to replace the spell book while the spec tree replaces talents?

edit: I guess a potential boon is it could facilitate adding more specs to each class?

I love in the interview with the Devs they straight up admit that talent trees won’t work beyond 2 or 3 expansions so eventually unless WoW shuts down we’ll end up probably back with the system we have today.

TheGameguru wrote:

I love in the interview with the Devs they straight up admit that talent trees won’t work beyond 2 or 3 expansions so eventually unless WoW shuts down we’ll end up probably back with the system we have today.

Or they're committed to re-working everything from the ground up again when things get too unwieldy. They've spent an awful lot of design effort trying to get their expansions to be stand-alone things that they don't have to worry about once they move on. Maybe they've finally made the business case for actually doing the work to keep the whole game viable.

Vargen wrote:

It looks like the new trees are replacing both the talent system AND the character spellbook. That should give them enough interesting nodes to make this work. And it means people will be gaining new spells when they decide they want them. That could be a big improvement for the leveling game.

Now that would make me question the design. Sounds super annoying if we had to go through the talent tree to pick all of our skills.
Plenty of skills kinda only make sense if you get them together.
I’d hope most skills are base line and just some of the outlier skills are from the talent tree (just like the current talent rows and trees of old), and otherwise focus on skill modifications and passives.
But then I generally also think most of the base skills should unlock early on. Like at lvl 10 you should have unlocked nearly all the base skills. Playing 45 of 50 lvls before an important skill is available has always been silly. The typical “the real game only starts at max lvl” that too many of these games suffer from.

Vargen wrote:

Or they're committed to re-working everything from the ground up again when things get too unwieldy. They've spent an awful lot of design effort trying to get their expansions to be stand-alone things that they don't have to worry about once they move on. Maybe they've finally made the business case for actually doing the work to keep the whole game viable.

Definitely would seem better than their previous strategy of just letting it all fall apart and hope nobody notice, by adding some shiny new thing on top of the wreckage.

I'd rather have the annoyance of opening a tree and selecting a skill than the annoyance of scrutinizing a poorly-sorted spellbook trying to work out what just changed.

Vargen wrote:

scrutinizing a poorly-sorted spellbook trying to work out what just changed.

Maybe, but won’t that part still be the exact same problem in a tree layout, just with an extra layer of confusing design on top. There is even less sorting of skills in a tree.

Redesigning the spell book with some better categories/sorting, would the way to go there imo.

Shadout wrote:
Vargen wrote:

scrutinizing a poorly-sorted spellbook trying to work out what just changed.

Maybe, but won’t that part still be the exact same problem in a tree layout, just with an extra layer of confusing design on top.

No. Because I won't get the thing until I click on it. Which means I'm A: doing it when I'm ready and B: have as much time as I need to look at the thing that I'm getting. Also a tree is necessarily somewhat laid out in the order that the nodes are acquired, so even if I did forget I'd probably just have to look at the ends of the branches. The spellbook just lists everything you have in alphabetical order with no regard for when you acquired it.

OMG!
WoW's new talent trees are going to be a sh*t show. "Talent trees make choices more meaningful" my ass!
Just listen to Preach's reaction when he finds out that in order to be able to cast power infusion on yourself, you have to spend 4 filler points.
I don't see how any of this is going to facilitate hybrid builds or not cause low level characters to pull their hair out.

Isn't the whole point of going to trees like this to make each choice less meaningful?

Trees like this also mean you have to choose a branch and then wait several levels to get the thing you actually want farther down that branch. That's never fun.

I still stick by my "at least I'll know what my passives are" comments, but that might not be enough to make me like the finished product.

I don't know enough about any of the classes that have been previewed to really judge for myself. These days the class I know best is Monk, which has never actually had talent trees...

I wonder if they delay the talent trees to a point patch of dragon flight. I am having a hard time believing they can get all the classes done to any workable enough state to make them functional by the end of the year.

I will also note that it looks like they give you enough points to fill out almost half of each tree. That is certainly a way to help alleviate "mistakes". But also, are they really trees if they just give you most of the talents anyways?

I also don't get the double nesting and dead end talents...

Also take a look at the following screenshot. That is the current shadow priest tree condensed and without any of the interdependencies. I don't see any benefit to the right of the dragon flight tree over this. It has perhaps twice the talents and prerequisites which to me doubles and then triples the confusion.
If I were Blizzard, I would have started with a hybrid of the current and dragonflight systems. Keep the left tree from dragon flight talents to get some semblance of hybrids and use the current talent system for the right tree.
Current condensed
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/UPiBwmi.jpg)
Hybrid of current and dragon flight
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/nUdLqnr.jpg)

The new trees look quite good to me.
I'd like to play around with the mage trees though, as it is the one I know best.

Being able to get nearly half the tree sounds like a bit much. On the other hand, if it means the trees have less filler points in them, it might be good.

I would probably prefer if they had used a web rather than a tree; as in, more connections between the different talents, and even the ability to move backward/upward from chosen talents. Having a single path through some of those talents doesn't exactly offer much choice.

What was old is new again? Are the devs just spinning a wheel to come up with these moves?

No such thing as a Hybrid class in WoW.. really never was.... so Talent Trees wasn't going to ever do anything remotely like that.. As well the entire leveling experience has been so condensed that its now barely a week of casual play to hit max level. I'm waiting for the day that they just get rid of levels entirely and not bother with the whole leveling "experience". Max level rotations and builds are what is important.

The Talent tree's won't really actual have any real gameplay changes or improvements.. for the most part within a few weeks of beta we will have all the various "approved" builds.. Raid, AOE, Mythic+, PVP etc. Deviations are certainly possible and for the most part won't actually have that much impact but for sure you can probably create some truly hideously broken builds that excel at nothing.

That being said it does look like you can put together a Frost DK Obliteration build and get Soul Reaper (what Frost really lacked compared to other melee classes) without much or any loss of utility... so baring something that I'm missing that might end up really cool.

I want them to go full Path of Exile and have one talent tree with like 2000 nodes on it and it’s impossible to create a build without a calculator or guide. Like half the fun of that game is messing with the talent tree, let’s pressure Blizz into just stealing it.

Back in Burning Crusade I ran a Feral Druid who traded the Mangle capstone for Nature’s Swiftness in the Restoration tree. That was pretty hybrid feeling. It didn’t turn out to be raid-viable, but I was able to quest and do dungeons with guild mates just fine.

Also it had everything to do with choosing between major abilities and not the tree structures leading up to them.

So the new talent trees are in and for the most part they're really well done. I made a Warrior alt and the leveling process was a lot more interesting and satisfying than it used to be. Figuring out builds on my existing max-level characters has been a bit more overwhelming, but I'm sure I'll get there once I start caring.

Should we have a new thread for the new expansion?

Vargen wrote:

Should we have a new thread for the new expansion?

Eh, that's up to you. Not many folks around here still play. The quote-unquote official Blackhand-A guild is just me, BadKen and a couple of other irregulars. (Hit me up if you want a place to park a toon or five.)

I went ahead and changed the title on this thread because at the rate we're going (two posts per month) we're a long way from breaking this one.

PS: Not a fan of having to configure talent trees. (I'm don't really care either way about talent trees; it's just having to redo them for multiple toons that's a giant PITA.) At some point I'll dig in but for now I'm copy-and-pasting pre-builds from Wowhead and Icy Veins. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that a lot of my favorite SL attacks are MIA for the moment, but I'm glad to see that my tankadin is still pretty much indestructible in ZM.

This thread barely moves so I don’t think a new one is necessary…this game is well into its twilight and that’s fine. It’s comfort food gaming to many like myself and it’s still a great way to kick back and kill bosses with friends.

Popped up in my feed for the current Classic WoTLK and it was amusing to watch.

You don't say?

And reported. Thanks for playing grinder.

lunchbox12682 wrote:

And reported. Thanks for playing grinder.

Thanks for reminding me that "grinder" can be spelled with an "e" and has a context outside of that one app (or sandwiches in New England).

The spam has been deleted.

sometimesdee wrote:
lunchbox12682 wrote:

And reported. Thanks for playing grinder.

Thanks for reminding me that "grinder" can be spelled with an "e" and has a context outside of that one app (or sandwiches in New England).

The spam has been deleted.

Now I’m craving an Italian with hots

In actual game related news, Dragon Riding is pretty darn cool.

My Razer keypad with the d-pad under my thumb died the day before the expansion dropped, so I plugged in an Xbox controller and have been leveling my Hunter with a spec that fits on the controller + top row of buttons on the chat pad. I'm swapping back to my keypad + mouse controls when my replacement unit gets here, but even when I do I think I'll keep the Xbox controller plugged in just for dragon riding.

Well I'm giving WOW another chance and started a new character. I've heard that you can now level through Shadowlands on a new character as long as you've unlocked a 60. Does anyone know if that's true?

That is true. Shadowlands has been added to Chromie Time, and Chromie Time goes from levels 10-60 now.

For the uninitiated:

Levels 1-10 are done in Exile's Reach. Veteran players can choose their race's original zone if they wish.

Levels 10-60 are done in Battle For Azeroth's questing zones. If you have a character at 60 already, you can talk to the Chromie the bronze dragon and she will let you pick a different expansion. She will then send you "back in time" to play through that expansion's zones. All the enemies and item rewards will be scaled to your level. Some zones will have a minimum level, but everything will scale all the way up to 60. That way you don't have to worry about having to abandon a quest chain or storyline because you've out-leveled it.

If you don't want everything scaling to your level, then you can just walk out the front gate of your city at level 10 and figure things out on your own. There are boards in the city that will point you to level-appropriate zones.

Once you hit level 58, they'll let you know that you can come back to the capital and go do Dragonflight. At level 60 they'll get a lot more insistent about it. Dragonflight takes you from 60-70 and into the current endgame content.

One thing to note about leveling in Shadowlands: You'll have to follow a very linear and very long storyline campaign. Threads of Fate, which allowed you to skip the SL storyline, no longer exists.

That said, the SL storyline is a great introduction to each zone and all the cliques and drama within. Each zone has side quests (I think) that will let you pick up extra XP. All in all, Shadowlands leveling is a fine way to get from 10 to 58 or so.

If you hate it, you can return to Chromie and request another timeline through another expansion.

Whatever you choose, it'll be quick. Leveling continues to be nerfed to the point that Blizzard might as well just let every new player start at 58.

Enix wrote:

Whatever you choose, it'll be quick. Leveling continues to be nerfed to the point that Blizzard might as well just let every new player start at 58.

I might have agreed in the past, but the new talent system makes the act of leveling more relevant than ever. I definitely grok the talents for the Warrior, Death Knight, and Warlock that I leveled during 10.0 much better than I do the talents of the Monk and Druid that I've played for years.