Topic: A few words on talent tree design

Rather than derail threads on individual classes or specializations, I thought I would address some common questions or misperceptions in this one thread.

We don't consider "bloat" a bad word. Players typically say that when there are more talents than they can possibly get. That's the whole idea. When you run out of interesting talents, then that's when we think we have a problem.

Related, if we do our jobs right, you are going to run out of dps talents (or healing talents if you're a healer, or mitigation talents if you're a tank). We don't want every talent to feel mandatory since you are prohibited from getting them all. We want you to have choices.

We don't consider every talent that doesn't directly lead to higher dps to be a "PvP talent." Survivability is a big deal in Cataclysm. In that vein, talents that keep you alive (or help healers conserve mana) are indirectly dps talents. :)

Related, many trees lost a lot of true PvP talents, such as dispel resistance or mechanic duration reductions. These are the kind of talents I describe as "arms races," where you need a counter to the ability someone else is using to try to counter you. We'd rather reel the whole thing in a little and make things like crowd control or dispels as powerful or as weak as they need to be baseline rather than assuming you have talents that make them less powerful.

We are providing some damage talents for healers. For the most part, those are optional talents for leveling, soloing, PvP or times in dungeons or raids when you don't need to heal.

Likewise, we don't assume tanks need to pick up every single dps talent in order to generate sufficient threat. You'll likely need some threat talents, but since you're probably dipping into a dps tree to get some of those, you're going to find way more than you can afford.

In most cases, raid buff talents are cheap and often have selfish bonuses. If they lack a selfish bonus, it's because we consider the talent so compelling that you'd probably want it when solo anyway. We see a lot of "I'll skip that talent, because someone else will bring that buff," but obviously that logic starts to fail when everyone comes to that conclusion. :) Also make sure you're familiar with how some of the buffs and debuffs have changed for Cataclysm. We are trying to make it even easier to get the big ones, especially for 10-player raids.

We aren't designing PvP vs. PvE trees. Ultimately, we consider a talent specialization to be a stylistic choice. However, given the challenges of nailing both PvP and PvE balance, as a consolation prize it's nice when at least there are no dead trees. If Frost and Arms weren't raiding juggernauts, at least they did have a place in the game in Lich King. But Cataclysm represents an opportunity to try again, so we hope to see Arms and Frost raiding, and Fury and Fire in PvP.

We aren't overhauling every single class. We are changing paladins quite a bit, and the resource systems for hunters and warlocks and Balance druids have changed. I get the sense some of you are waiting for that magical build in which half of your talents have been scrapped in favor of new ones, and in many cases, those changes just aren't coming. That's not to say we're done with any tree.

We haven't been super concerned about numbers yet, and we aren't at all concerned about glyphs yet. It's helpful if you note abilities that seem to have lost a lot of damage compared to live, just so we can make sure it's intentional (as it is for many AE abilities). If you think you won't use some core spell just because it doesn't hit or heal for enough yet, then it's fine to bring that up, but you can also assume that the numbers just aren't quite right on it yet. Of course this also means that you may feel underpowered (or rarely overpowered, though players almost always feel underpowered) compared to someone else. This does not mean you're doomed in Cataclysm or that you need to SCREAM REAL LOUD to make sure the developers don't overlook it. Numbers are much easier to adjust once we're happy with the basic mechanics.

We've gotten a ton of great feedback already, and I want to personally thank you for that. We make changes every day that are the direct result of the feedback we receive, and that certainly includes this forum, the live forums, and many of the great websites out there where players discuss World of Warcraft design.

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Q u o t e:
I'm curious if hunters are under consideration for significant redesign? (much like Paladins right now) Their has not been much change in the last few weeks to our trees. I understand focus is clunky right now, so i'm wondering if that's affecting how our trees are being designed.

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No, hunters are not undergoing any kind of massive redesign. We have spent our efforts lately on trying to make sure focus works as intended in both aspects and at low and high level. We're not there yet. We'll work on the talent trees a little more when we feel like focus is where we want it to be, since that will affect the talent design.

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Q u o t e:
By Command I refer to the tank's ability to control an environment via taunts, mob control, things like that. I think this is where a lot of lines start to blur because it's the main area where the classes avoid homogenization. And that's a good thing, but when another class has a very useful tool and you don't, and you're presented with a talent that gives you something similar to that, the gut reaction is that the talent is mandatory. The result is players sort of trapping themselves without realizing they're doing it.

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It is particularly a challenge with tanks once they are ready to sub-spec into other trees. A Prot warrior for instance looks at the Arms and Fury tree and sees all these dps talents, and assumes he has to get all of those to hold threat. Yet, we can't very well make the top two tiers of Arms and Fury with no dps talents. Hopefully the way it will work out is that tanks will need "some" dps and can decide whether to get those talents in Arms, Fury and Prot, but won't feel the need to get them all.

There are some tanks who get some things "for free" while others need to talent into it. As long as the end result is similar it should feel okay. Part of what we are dealing with is all these brand new talents or old favorites that have changed a lot. You don't have the years fo experience and theorycrafting to fall back on so you don't know (yet) if say Thunderstruck is mandatory (it shouldn't be).

There will be some amount of dps talents in all trees. Some players will call any dps talent that doesn't require them to click something "passive and boring" but we also think there is a limit to the number of procs, stacking buffs, and using base spells in unusual ways that a player can manage. We'll have some of those talents for sure, but not 20 of them per tree.

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Q u o t e:
I realize this, it's just that Fury is already being hugely overhauled. The rage system is changing, Heroic Strike and Cleave are changing, our rotation is massively changing due to the removal of Whirlwind and the whole tree is massively shifting focus toward relying on enrages for damage. There's also the 31-point talent system and the impliations it has for tree structure - talents that were previously acceptable are now considered "bloat" and the amount of available utility is suddenly in focus.

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Sure, and Fury is the kind of tree that needs a lot of adjustment because so many of the talents are "you do more damage" of various kinds (and there are still some we haven't been able to prune quite yet). But I've also seen a lot of posts where say a Shadow priest or Feral druid imagines they are getting a paladin-level overhaul with half of their spells new. Neither the Shadow or Feral trees are done yet, but the bones are there. You'll see talent slide around or maybe one or two new ones added, but they aren't getting new resources (unless you call the orbs a resource), and we aren't removing say Lacerate or Mind Flay.

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Q u o t e:
Are all raid buffs going to receive some sort of selfish benefit stop discourage people from skipping these talents? I don't see myself ever picking up Rampage again as long as I raid with a Feral Druid. Similarly, I don't see a raiding Frost Mage ever picking up Enduring Winter, at all, with the abundance of Replenishment sources out there.

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The thing is, Rampage is a sizeable dps increase for 1 talent point. If all you ever do is raid and you know you'll always have another version, then I guess you're safer skipping it. If you ever solo or run 5-player dungeons, it's a nice benefit to have. If you have the luxury of spending your dual-spec on your solo Fury build, then again, Rampage might be a luxury. This is one of the reasons though that we are hesitant to offer more specs. At one talent point, Rampage should be a no brainer. If it cost 2 or 3 points for a buff someone else might bring, then I could see skipping it in a raid.

Likewise, if like the Frost mage, every Survival hunter, Ret paladin etc. decides that someone else will bring Replenishment, then nobody will have it. :(

Talent builds are supposed to be about evaluating the pros and cons of every talent. If you can quickly tailor your talent build to the other folks you are playing with, then you are just avoiding the cons. Situational talents can be skipped until you're in the situation that needs them. Dual spec was conceived so that players could tank or dps or raid and PvP, not so that you could skip over situational talents and yet still be able to use them as needed. For all the good that dual-spec has done, it has done some harm too.

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Q u o t e:
I'll agree here. Some classes are looking pretty good. Warriors, for example, might do well to get 1 more talent per tree, but overall there's a good amount of choice. Warlocks and Hunters, however, are looking rather sparse regarding the number of choices they have access to.

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I'd say that at this point in time, the trees that are farthest along are mage, rogue, shaman and warrior. Paladin would be close except that things have changed so much that we still have to move talents around quite a bit.

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Q u o t e:
Maybe it's just because of my experiences and the way I think of it, but I felt like the complaints about having to take "PvP talents" was more along the lines of them being largely situational or possibly even useless when it came to PvE (specifically raiding/boss encounters).

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Yeah, a good distinction is a talent that procs on crit, is pretty much a PvP talent. A talent though that procs on taking damage, or one that makes you easier to heal or whatever can be a good PvE survivability talent. In LK the attitude shifted a little to "I just do dps. Healing is the job of the healer." That was more justified when healers had so much mana. We really do expect raid leaders to tell some of their members that they took too much damage on some attempts, costing the healers more mana than was necessary. That shifts some of the responsibility to the entire raid instead of just blaming healers if you wipe.