3rd Quest ProblemFollow

It's like you don't know me at all.

The point you're missing is that respecs happened within trees, which meant meaningful sacrifices to alter a spec for situations. Yeah, Unholy DKs might respec to nab Antimagic Zone. Frost DKs, however, wouldn't be. Even if AMZ would be useful for a fight, completely altering their play style to use a spec they hadn't optimized their gear for was far from optimal.

If I wanted to use AMZ, I had to drop dps talents to get it. And because of that, it was actually a sacrifice to take the ability. And not one easily calculated, because there's really no way to calculate the effect of a utility skill when TCing. That meant it was up to me (or, well, my guild) to determine whether or not I wanted to make that sacrifice.

That's no longer true of the new system. It isn't a meaningful choice to drop Purgatory in place of AMZ or Lichborne, because there's no particular reason I'd desire Purgatory in the first place. It saps value from the concept of respeccing. It's no longer about weighing pros or cons, figuring out if I want to lose some dps for utility or survivability, or if it was better to just pump up my damage. The very notion of what a talent is just seems useless now. Because you AREN'T more talented than other characters now. Not really. More talented than a level 10, sure. But you're just... there... now.

And yes, the Druid talent tree isn't interesting. Outside of Tier 4, everything is more or less set by your specialization, or what specific CC would be useful. Even then, Tier 4 has a clear winner based on encounter. But at least all 3 talents have meaningful impact on play style and constitute an actual sacrifice to move from one to the other.

There are some interesting talents there, yes. The probably isn't the individual talents, it's the arrangement of them. Yeah, I love Wild Charge and Feral Swiftness. What I don't love is how clearly preferable Wild Charge is for kitties and Feral Swiftness for Boomkins. Instantly jumping back into melee range as a kitty (or jumping out just before a blast fires)? Yes please. With that short a CD, Feral Swiftness can't compare. But most Boomkin movement is going to be avoiding small ground AoEs, which makes something without a CD preferable. Being a lot slower than a cat helps add value, too.

Outside of Tier 4, yes, the Druid talent tree isn't interesting. Tier 4 is the only tier where you'll be making a meaningful decision on a talent that will actually change your play style and constitute a sacrifice to change. Exception is if you're brazen enough to try a much more complicated kitty priority system for a tiny dps buff. For 99% of kitties, Heart of the Wild is the clear choice.

So, yes, it's not interesting. Pretending like most of these tiers actually represent a choice is absurd. The answer for most of them is clear. It's not even a question of preference, it's an objective notion of what works best in PVE content.

If your fights were lasting super long in TOR, then you were making some serious mistakes. Properly handled, no group should have taken longer than 30 seconds. 1 minute max. And that's 1 minute for 4 or 5 mobs, not for one.

But I think I'm still not getting my point across. I'm not complaining that the talents themselves are uninteresting, I'm complaining that the choices are uninteresting. Because each talent in most of the trees has a very strong PVE, PVP or spec skew, the act of choosing a talent has become extremely uninteresting.

The blunt fact of the matter is that you will barely ever make an interesting choice when choosing talents. That was not true once upon a time, because the act of choosing a talent tree was huge. Yeah, every Unholy DK was going to use the same spec on some fight (assuming they were similarly geared). But their talent choices for that fight could radically change their play style compared to the decisions Frost would make for exact same fight. That's a big distinction, and it was meaningful for the player and for the raid. That's not an empty choice at all, because you can't just switch to the other spec and perform well.

Specs still exist, but they're only for adding the abilities core to the game play. Almost all utility skills are either unique to the class or are talent options.

That radically changes game play and homogenizes classes by taking the power of choice away from the player.

It's no longer just true that every Unholy DK uses the same spec. Now it's true that EVERY DK uses the same spec (with one minor variation in Tier 1). Blood, Frost, and Unholy. Outside of the choice in Tier 1, the spec remains the same.

THAT is why the power of choice is no longer interesting. Because your specialization, uncoupled from talents, means almost nothing. It impacts nothing but the way in which you inflict damage. The way you interact with the raid and the rest of the players around you is the same as every other DK. Okay, sorry, that's not 100% correct--Unholy DKs need to throw Unholy Frenzy on their top DPS during Bloodlust. But then that's it.

Antimagic Zone used to be strategically an Unholy-only skill. Lichborne could be reached by Blood and Unholy, but it was a significant dps drop to do so, so only Frost gained access to that fear break. But Frost gained access to other utility talents that were great for raids that Unholy could not provide (which they've at least sort of kept by giving them their aura).

It made playing a certain spec more interesting, because it had a meaningful effect on what you could bring to the table. Now? Not so much. Every <insert class> in the raid probably has a nearly identical spec to you. There will be minor variations by specialization, and that's it. But the utilities will almost always be universal.

The sad part is that, because the utility talents are almost all completely situational, they could just go ahead and make all three of them standard to each class and the only thing it would influence was PVP. That's not an interesting talent system.

Nah, only for five levels. So the very first starting area where there are no aggressive mobs, really. At 6 you get cat and mangle and can take Wrath and Moonfire off your toolbar. (Unless you like them.) It was a big improvement when they gave hunters pets from level 1, but I don't know that they can do the same with druid. The OP was whacking things with her staff because she didn't know she should use the abilities on her toolbar - new people starting from scratch need to learn the basic mechanics. I think throwing shapeshifting at them from level 1 might be too frustrating.

True, I didn't realize the TC thread for Boomkins on EJ was already updated to 5.2. HotW is the clear winner for dps, now. NV is taken for its healing component, not for maximizing your dps.

Feral hasn't changed. Prime dps comes from using NS and DoC together to buff your abilities. But it's stupidly annoying to actually pull off, because kitties don't have a structured rotation. So only masochists take it (though only masochists play kitties, so...) HotW is competitive dps that's not going to be slammed by the flow of combat or a minor *****-up with your rotation. Theoretical higher dps with probable lower dps really makes it less attractive. Apparently, Rip being bugged is one of the only reasons it's actually even viable now. Though that's not likely to change, because it's been bugged for years...

What? I did say kitties were masochists.

Well, as long as she enjoys JOHN @#$%ING MADDEN.

If just the idea of something sounding like that disturbs you, even knowing nothing about what it is, you might want to go Boomkin until you're more comfortable with the game.

I'm kinda glazing out on the Wall o' Text here, but I'm surprised to see complaints about how leveling to 10 is hard. I've just done a couple recently, including one on a Pacifist Run which meant no killing any mobs at all (so no quests that involved killing anything), and I still managed to get to 10 in a couple of hours with no deaths. What is this difficulty you speak of?

ETA: Not bashing the OP. When you are new to a game you can't be expected to know the mechanics, but for seasoned players to complain how hard it is... Boring, yes, I'll grant you, but difficult or time consuming, no.

Edited, Mar 5th 2013 6:02am by Hexraven