[Rejected] Open up talent trees?

[.Sorrugis]

Speaking as a feral druid, (which is horribly weak right now in pvp and I seem to be only one in bgs ever)

Haha. I'm sure the 3 warriors rooted indoors via natures grasp agree that feral is weak. Or that zsombee guy you were able to blow up in 2 gcd's. what's deterrance?

I think there are some real strong items out there that when people have them here very soon, they are going to make ferals very strong and people just don't realize their full potential yet.

[.Jamhead]

Speaking as a feral druid, (which is horribly weak right now in pvp and I seem to be only one in bgs ever)

Haha. I'm sure the 3 warriors rooted indoors via natures grasp agree that feral is weak. Or that zsombee guy you were able to blow up in 2 gcd's. what's deterrance?

I think there are some real strong items out there that when people have them here very soon, they are going to make ferals very strong and people just don't realize their full potential yet.

All of which trinket and spam charge stun because I have nothing else lol :)

[jidakra]

Speaking as a feral druid, (which is horribly weak right now in pvp and I seem to be only one in bgs ever)

Haha. I'm sure the 3 warriors rooted indoors via natures grasp agree that feral is weak. Or that zsombee guy you were able to blow up in 2 gcd's. what's deterrance?

I think there are some real strong items out there that when people have them here very soon, they are going to make ferals very strong and people just don't realize their full potential yet.

All of which trinket and spam charge stun because I have nothing else lol

Yeah, hitting 60 and pvping even for a little while showed me that non-cleave classes simply dont have the tools to deal with cleaving warriors and hunters - not hitting 5cp after an opener as a feral, not having dispersion as a spriest, mage literally having nothing of any sort of use, destro w/o shadowfury and affli w/o dmg due to lack of haunt, paladin and shaman just going oom after a few seconds, etc.

There isn't rly any dmg/resilience fix that is going to change this. If you don't have the mobility or cc to kite warriors and the defensive tools to deal with hunters, you will not have a fighting chance. Even adding resilience will not help this issue much, it will enable healers to keep people and survive themselves, however then mana-issues will very quickly arise because of the gear we have available and ultimately, with the core issue being mechanics and lack thereof, it will only prolong the unavoidable.

I think the best way to make this server live is to focus entirely on PvE - with the trees being as they are I feel like PvP is a lost cause and since the server is PvE in the first place it might not lead to any noticeable playerbase-loss.

[Xaroc]

Not entirely sure why there needs to be a poll. Without open talents, most classes and specs are incomplete and unbalanced. Capping talent points at 60 isn't going to create a "Vanilla" feeling at all, the talent tree is the WoTLK one and it is designed to have the amount of talents a level 80 would have. By not capping it you're not only making more classes and specs viable, you're making them playable.

[EbonTopaz]

I say, leave the talent trees as they are and unlock the additional tiers as the expansions come out.

I will admit that there are some blatant balance issues for some classes in regards to only having access to their level 40 talents. But keep in mind, considering how unbalanced Vanilla was, we're still in a better position with the current talents than in actual Vanilla. Remember, not only were most talent specs considered completely useless back then, there were even some entire classes that weren't viable at all!

Aside from that, some of the later talents just blatantly make our characters too powerful. It would make the raid dungeons far too easy, and the devs would have to go to great lengths to try and make them stay difficult. Just look at how easy it is to clear Vanilla raids in level 60 groups on actual Wrath servers. It's a painless cakewalk!

Yes, not everything spec is going to be viable. But all I can say is, suck it up. This is the best way to bring challenge to this unique server concept, and it allows people to experiment with builds instead of just rushing to the overpowered final tiers.

[Lanfeare]

There has never been a single wow expansion where every single spec is viable, and there never will be.

[Xaroc]

There has never been a single wow expansion where every single spec is viable, and there never will be.

They were not viable because of numbers not being tweaked accordingly, in this case they are purposely locking classes out of their main abilities and talents by not giving them the necessary talents. Every class and spec is going to be incomplete.

[lukedw]

My personal take on this would be the following:

Open up all the talents that are in the same row as the old 31 point Vanilla talent and nothing underneath them.

This way everyone would be pleased imo, at the same time for specs that are already viable in the current state of the talent system, but also for specs that need those extra talents in 31 point - row to be close to viable.

[srfz]

^ Actually not a bad idea

[Beknyan]

Personally I'd really like the talents to open up, my favourite spec is balance druid and I'd love to play Wotlk boomkin in vanilla and tbc . My reason for joining was so I could play older content with wotlk combat etc. It would open up alot more choices for people to play what they want and create a new experience all together.

I don't think you should be afraid to be a unique server with features like this as there is plenty of other servers offering a more blizzlike experience with vanilla and tbc talents.

Obviously it'll take more work with the balancing the raids/pvp around these extra talents and for some specs there isn't raid tier sets for them in vanilla, which sucks but I'd give that up for my boomkin! lol.

[Virunus]

There has never been a single wow expansion where every single spec is viable, and there never will be.

Every single spec has been viable for MoP and WoD, because they finally dropped the whole idea of having specs that are meant for PvE and specs that are meant for PvP.

Do not confuse viable with competitive. Missing core abilities is a big issue right now. The classes have already been balanced by Blizzard around the 3.3.5 talents. No, it won't be perfect, as we have a level cap at 60, not 80, but it'll be better than it is now.

Arbitrarily restricting WRATH talents in the WRATH client is not emulating vanilla. Its just keeping numbers lower. They can always tweak things after the fact. If that means that say hunters in general get a flat 20% damage nerf to everything to bring them in line, thats fine, because thats the quickest way for devs to bring damage in line without taking too much time away from getting us content.

[Hatson]

My personal take on this would be the following:

Open up all the talents that are in the same row as the old 31 point Vanilla talent and nothing underneath them.

This way everyone would be pleased imo, at the same time for specs that are already viable in the current state of the talent system, but also for specs that need those extra talents in 31 point - row to be close to viable.

Yes, please.

For example, it's kind of silly that Shamans can't use DW, the 31-point talent. Even though it was a mechanic introduced with the launch of BC, and now we're playing on 3.3.5, with the super nerfed version of WF, which was only nerfed in the first place because DW got introduced. So playing 2h only with a supernerfed WF is kind of disappointing.
At least give the option to take that 31-point talent.. it's kind of a core mechanic of the class / spec.

And this would probably be nice for other classes / specs as well.

[.Felix]

+1 probably the best compromise. as well as enh shammies' dual weild - prot pallies can get spiritual attunement which is somewhat necessary - but avenger's shield still gets to be a new reward once vanilla content is cleared and lvl 70 is unlocked.

[.Rustoak]

Well since my post is referenced in the original post, I'll chime in. I am still for opening up the trees, and I understand the balance nightmare this would create for the old content, however I don't believe it would be as much of a problem for pvp as many seem to feel. Will bursty classes still be bursty, yes. But that's the design of the class. It feels like you all assume people will be bursting for the amounts of damage you did in wotlk gear, but are failing to realize you wont be getting any gear over ilvl 89 here. Instead of poo-pooing on anything that doesn't keep the race/class you picked on top, why not at least be open to trying it.

As it stands now, the 2 primary class specs I truly enjoy, are unplayable. Should I have read more into how the server was doing things before rolling, Probably so. That said however, I want to play my enhancement shaman or prot paladin in this content, on this server. But at the moment, the only one of those 2 that can even get close to usable is the prot paladin, but not without getting a very specific gear set, and that and only that gear. which means no upgrade paths, no reason not to just roll as one of the weaker healers/buff bots currently.

And I also see people harping on about the vanilla experience over and over. Not to be a dick, but this isn't that server if that's your goal. You will NOT get that experience here. What I signed up for here was to be able to redo my glory days of raiding through vanilla CONTENT up through bc CONTENT and then eventually wotlk CONTENT. Not to reinvent the fucking wheel to get there. Wotlk had some of the most balanced class setups that this game has ever had, and that was a result of having ALL available talents in the talent trees. /end

[shibli09]

Well since my post is referenced in the original post, I'll chime in. I am still for opening up the trees, and I understand the balance nightmare this would create for the old content, however I don't believe it would be as much of a problem for pvp as many seem to feel. Will bursty classes still be bursty, yes. But that's the design of the class. It feels like you all assume people will be bursting for the amounts of damage you did in wotlk gear, but are failing to realize you wont be getting any gear over ilvl 89 here. Instead of poo-pooing on anything that doesn't keep the race/class you picked on top, why not at least be open to trying it.

As it stands now, the 2 primary class specs I truly enjoy, are unplayable. Should I have read more into how the server was doing things before rolling, Probably so. That said however, I want to play my enhancement shaman or prot paladin in this content, on this server. But at the moment, the only one of those 2 that can even get close to usable is the prot paladin, but not without getting a very specific gear set, and that and only that gear. which means no upgrade paths, no reason not to just roll as one of the weaker healers/buff bots currently.

And I also see people harping on about the vanilla experience over and over. Not to be a dick, but this isn't that server if that's your goal. You will NOT get that experience here. What I signed up for here was to be able to redo my glory days of raiding through vanilla CONTENT up through bc CONTENT and then eventually wotlk CONTENT. Not to reinvent the fucking wheel to get there. Wotlk had some of the most balanced class setups that this game has ever had, and that was a result of having ALL available talents in the talent trees. /end

God you are wrong on so many levels I don't know whether I want to laugh at you or cry. Actually I'm doing both right now, I'm laughing so hard at you that I'm crying. Im going to copy/pasta my response to this thread in the prior page. I suggest you actually sit down and read it because it literally tells you exactly why you are wrong on all the points you bring up, and exactly why the devs will NEVER open up the talents before their appropriate expansions, and I fucking garuntee that.

Enjoy the read.

I see everyone talking from a players stand point in regards to opening up 51 point talents, so I wanted to try to appeal to you from a developers/owners standpoint.

Opening up the 51 point talents will seriously risk the longevity and potential growth of this server. Everyone who joined this server KNEW going into it that talents were restricted to 31 and would open up as expansions came along. Changing this now would cause a portion of your members to leave and could harm potential new players from joining after seeing a dip in population or not being appealed to the server any longer.

Even if you were to open up a PTR to test it, think what is going to happen to the servers population. You are going to split the already low population with players playing the PTR instead of live realms. Splintering the community now and making the live server appear dead would seriously harm the growth the server is currently having. When I log onto a server, and see the place dead it makes me want to quit. Add that to very low RDF groups and bg/arena Qs would further harm the server and the player base playing on the live realm.

This would also open up a massive amount of work for you guys as developers to take on. If you think balancing the abilities right now is hard or a lot of work, you wont believe whats going to happen when you open up talents.

IF YOU WANT REAL GROWTH IN POPULATION you need to focus on getting content out. I can tell you right now that 9 months of only MC>Ony>ZG is going to cause serious stagnation in the population and raiding guilds. No one wants to do this content for 9 months. The current raiding guilds and potential player growth would far much prefer having Ony and ZG clumped together so it is only 6 months and get BWL in 6 months.

Right now you need to work about hitting your marks and making good on your word to ensure these raids are out when you say so. If you are able to do this or get ahead of schedule you will bring in players from other servers who are not getting any content out and it will keep current raiders on your server.

In order to do this you need to completely nip this debate over opening 51 point talents, there SHOULD NOT be any PTR there should not be any time or effort put into balancing this or making this happen.

Now lets take a look at how this would affect us as players and the mechanics/gameplay of the server if these changes were to be put in place.

First off lets look at balance, I see everyone who is for the talents to be put in use this common defense "oh there needs to be balance changes anyway so lets do it now instead of waiting for BC/WoTLK to balance the spells". This is wrong on so many levels and has zero thought or analysis put into it. Let me explain why you are wrong. ALOT of these talents/abilties put into place in later expansions have their co-efficients and percentages based on the gear and HP numbers at their appropriate levels.

Heres an example, lets say spell "A" has a 115% wep dmg coefficient in BC because hp levels are inflated compared to vanilla, if we want spell "A" to be vanilla balanced the co-efficient would have to be changed from 115% to a lower co-efficient. Same with spell power co-efficients and etc. The devs would have to go through all this work to make these spells work in vanilla content with vanilla hp levels, and then completely change everything back to their original co-efficients so they would be properly balanced in their respective expansions.

If you look at this in regards to PvP WE DO NOT HAVE RESILIENCE in the game yet, resilience acted kind of a balancing mechanism for alot of the BC/WotLK spells for them to be used in both pve and pvp withouth completely breaking either aspect of the game.

If you look at this in regards to PvE you are missing a huge fundamental error in enabling these talents. These talents were created with the current content and boss mechanics in their respective expansions. The mechanics and gameplay of raids in Vanilla, vs BC vs WoTLK is vastly different and these spells and abilties completely alter the style of raiding since there were alot more complex and movement based mechanics in the game.

The arguement that the game is already unbalanced so why not make it more unbalanced and then try to rebalance it is totally idiotic. Adding these talents aren't going to make this game more unbalanced, it will straight up break the game because there are so many factors and variables not being counted towards this decision.

Supporting the opening to the talents will not only slow down the progression of content creation on this server but will also straight up kill the damn server.

There is so much more I could go into this topic on why its a bad idea, but I already wrote a big enough novel for you guys to read.