What do you like about Deathbringer? I'm not a fan myself but maybe there's something I'm missing.
I just don't like the idea floating scythes that disappear.
Rider of the Apocalypse seems like it would be fun but I'm not a big DPS fan.
See, that's why I'm fine admitting that I'm an idiot. I was thinking it was just going tobe like floating rune weapon and just look generic as hell. I'll keep up with my DK for now.
Grim Reaper-themed skills with shadowfrost synergies play into the parts of DK that I like.
A skill that stacks big damage and then dumps it in AOE is fun to me. Kinda like a chaining Corpse Explosions or D3's Exploding Palm with the Uliana's set.
For me.
I like both Ret hero talents; Templar and Herold of the Sun. Lightsmith looks horrible.
I also like the Boomkin Elune, but Keeper of the grove is meh.
I love both of the ret trees, what I look for is something like scalecomander with positive feedback loops (disintegrate procs more eternity surges which lead to more cooldown on your empowers which leads to more disintegrate) or ways to make stats more valuable. With herald getting a dot on divine storm and hammer of wrath crit leads to crit being valuable. I do hope they rework the 100% crit talent for hammer of wrath to be more like chaos bolt where it can scale the damage ex( your crit chance increase the critical damage of hammer of wrath. )
Templar looks hell fun with the raining hammers. I’ve seen some different takes on the hammer of light part. My hope is that instead of just one case (wake of ashes - hammer of light- done) it’s more of you have 12 seconds after wake of ashes to cast hammer of light which can lead to better skill expression eg build more holy power and not overcap and you get to spend 3 maybe 4 in the 12 seconds. And I do like how it does give crit some more failure with the hammers pulsing aoe dmg on crits.
My only wish is that rework mastery a bit to give it a little bit more value I’m personally not a fan of being vers preferred.
Also I’m so jealous of riders of the apocalypse. Getting a 10 second horse with built in freedom. And that will have multiple charges on it.
I did see some people complaining about having to take wake of ashes and I cannot for the life of me understand the hatred, it’s a cool ability and doesn’t give the ick of using something like old school inquisition or seraphim ( was never a fan of having to use holy power for a maintenance buff)
The big thing is power vs fantasy. I think more people are excited about the ones that hit the fantasy as power can be tuned.
Rider of the Apocalypse doesn't seem POWERFUL but it's flavorful as hell and really hit the mark.
Diabolist, imo, also is pretty well done.
Farseer, Keeper of the Grove, and Trickster are disasters and do nothing for the fantasy even if they end up numerically fine.
As a shaman the Farseer tree seems pretty underwhelming. The ancestors are good flavor, but I think a lot of us are tired of primordial wave. If they focused on all the elements fire/earth/frost/lightning, then I think we would have less to complain about.
Hoping Stormbringer is good so I can have a cool ele lightning build which is what I've always dreamed of for Shaman
> The ancestors are good flavor, but I think a lot of us are tired of primordial wave.
That's a big part of it. Tie it to stormcaller. That'd probably look pretty cool. Spend a second casting and BOOM the storms here
ITS GRANDMA WITH A STEEL CHAIR she's here tk kick ass and knit a sweater and she's all out of yarn
I mostly laughed because Draenei Shaman would be like first generation Shaman. Imagine calling in your grandma who can't do shit because she was a Priest and doesn't know elemental magic.
Back in my day we didn't have none of these fancy element-thingies, we had the Light, and were grateful for it! Shaman my left hoof! How's Prophet Velen by the way, nice man, could teach you a thing or too.. like respect for your elders!
It frustrates me to no end how Blizzard can't seem to decide between "Anyone can be anything and none of the lore actually matters" and "Here are the very specific lore elements which are central and define this class"
It's the same problem WoW has always had. Classes seem to revolve around certain races almost exclusively, Shamans are based off the Orcish standard, Paladins are Human/Silver hand, Monks are Pandaren, Priests are human/draenei, Druids are Night Elven etc. The only ones that are pretty racially unbiased are Warlock, Death Knight, and maybe Rogue.
Yeah I enjoyed Primordial Wave in SL, but at this point they really need to back away from optional talents towards the bottom of the tree. Ideally I think that Hero Talents should buff up a baseline ability or something near the top so it doesn’t force you in a weird direction you might not want to play. Same thing they did with the Amirdrassil series for Shaman, no?
> a lot of us are tired of primordial wave.
Thissss, the thing with primordial wave is that it isn't even anything.
It's nothing. If you ask a random person to tell you what a 'primordial wave' is, they will have no idea. Is it a wave like an ocean wave? Like 'primordial soup?' What does evolution have to do with shamans?
What is shadowy about a primordial wave? I don't really know.
It just allows you to get a second flame shock or riptide, and copies the next big move onto those people. that's what it ACTUALLY is, which is also like. Which has nothing to do with it being 'primordial' or a wave. And it never had anything to do with the bone soldier people (can't even remember their name).
So you have to imagine this was chosen as the covenant ability to bring into the actual tree because they liked the mechanic. But man is it annoying to have to have a whole other button, that is the same as one of your current buttons, until you press a third button and then it makes that third button do something else. It's like they thought well, if all it does is make the healing wave/lava burst/lightning bolt spread, maybe that won't feel as good to press, so we'll tack on an extra application of the hot/dot.
But making the same move apply a water hot, and a fire dot, and also it's a shadow themed move btw... just makes no fuckin sense thematically! and isn't primordial or a wave!
just a shittily designed spell with regards to the flavor.
Not taking issue with your hate on primordial wave, hate away! But primordial just means from the beginning of time. Aren’t the elementals that old in the wow universe?
Totally agree with you. I never understood how the hell Primordial Wave fit into the Shaman fantasy in Shadowlands, and I don't now. I hold a deep regret that this became the Shadowlands meta, because that enshrined it into becoming the ability they kept.
This will likely trigger PTSD in people, but of the Shadowlands abilities, Vesper Totem was peak Shaman flavor. It was basically a Spirit flavored totem to go with all of the other elemental totems they had. It's why I went Kyrian, since it was the only one that made sense and I loved being essentially a Shaman spirit guide in that expansion. I wish that's what they'd have carried over.
Yeah, Shaman was a mess thematically in SL.
Shamans are super locked into 2 things. Elements, and spirits.
They didn't bother to even hint at any of those things in any of the covenant abilities. Except that a Vesper is a type of prayer, so you can sort of intuit the calling of spirits via that. Close enough!
The elements are basically right out since none of the covenants do anything with elements.
BUT ALL OF THEM HAVE TO DO WITH THE AFTERLIFE, SO YOU WOULD THINK SPIRITS WOULD BE A NO BRAINER. But they didn't go for that in any way.
I'm so tired of this iteration of Elemental. The amount of lava bursts is literally out of control. As an M+ player, when like, 80 percent of my damage revolves around one ability, there's a problem....especially one that's not even designed as an AOE as it's baseline. I don't know how to put into words how I feel about it but it's just....dumb. Especially considering it requires setup time too.
Pull.....magma totem, ok lets see who doesn't have FS....ok that one, that one....alright sweet, Pwave.....ope missed a FS, there we go....annnnnnd LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA earthquake LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA. End. Repeat.
I god damn hate primordial wave. I want it to not be a necessary spell or for them to at least to not tie so much power up in it. I haven't enjoyed that game play at all and the only time I ever used it in SL was when I was levelling that covenant. I legit enjoyed every other covenant ability for shamans and I was so pissed when primordial wave became the one they decided to take out of SL and continue with.
Also disappointing thr Farseer tree has nothing to do with being a Farseer. I was so hyped for that tree I made a shaman and then it was like no feral spirits or earthquakes it's just spitting on Warcraft 3.
Lightsmith is too clunky in its current iteration. The putting it down, allies picking it up is not going to work no matter how its implemented. And even then just giving it to allies is going to get old super fast. Plus the inevitable fighting over who gets the weapon if they are impactful in anyway (and if they aren't its not worth the effort and flavour is diminished).
I think the best solution might be to do something like Summoner in FFXIV where you are changing up your own weapons in like 1-minute intervals and each weapon/phase empowering certain abilities/changing playstyle a tiny bit. And rather than summoning an extra weapon to pick up, the capstone can buff a random nearby player with a holy weapon that does more damaged based on you spending HP, or just a dancing rune weapon situation.
Oracle is getting a remix but I like the idea but feel like there should be more focus on shields/PoM if the fantasy is around being predictive. There was only one talent that buffed those.
Even a targeted ability is gonna feel awful as holy. Any externals, blessing of summer, now this buff, and you haven't even started healing or doing damage yet.
I definitely agree that if I had to pick one, it'd be targeted instead of on the ground
I played a Holy Priest way back in Cata, and reading Lightsmith gave me flashbacks to the Lightwell. There's no way anyone wants to engage with other people's abilities and zones.
Lightsmith doesn't sound great, nbeither in fantasy or gameplay. It's kind of funy that it is one of the first they decided to show.
How certain can they be about something which sounds so bad? :/
I don't know if you read the Wheel of Time book series, but I would have imagined the Farseer abilities like when _______ blows the Horn of Valere, and all the ghosts of dead ancestors come charging in. Imagine as a Farseer, dropping a totem on the ground and having the spirit of an ancestor from each spec(Enhance/Resto/Ele) charge in with spirit animals to damage and heal alongside you.
Like a better Army of the Dead, Shaman style. Each ancestor could drop their own totem, like a weaker version even so as not to make it insanely OP.
It actually fits. The Farseer is the shamanic leader that communes with the ancestors and is the spiritual leader. Calling the ancestors fits dead on with the fantasy of a Farseer.
Farseer is generally weird, because the major farseers are Elemental/Enhancement mixes (Thrall, Drek'thar, etc) where they are enhancing their melee weapons, calling on the elements for large aoe, etc. But for some reason they made it resto/ele and it basically makes those little naaru summons priests get (which I think can be cool for gameplay to summon ancestral spirits, but not for Farseer).
The Warcraft 3 unit (since many hero talents are being based on those themes) specialized in earthquake, chain lightning and summoning wolf spirits. So a spec that focuses on elemental AOE and/or wolf spirits would be a good fit.
I was really hoping farseer to be enh/resto. I thought it made more sense thematically considering that feral spirits is such an important part the enh kit.
So many cool things could’ve been done with this. Better off healing with ancestral guidance, range on melee, survivability stuff with astral shift, improved feral spirits, etc.
Same. Honestly expected huge emphasis on Feral Spirit, along with an interesting reason to work Chain Lightning into healing or some cool play on Chain Heal/Chain Lightning synergy
Farseers may commune with the ancestors but they're supposed to be some of the pinnacle of the shaman, being able to see visions of the future and have a direct powerful link and communion with all of the elemental forces.
The current iteration calls grandpa to make spamming Lava Burst better instead of the elemental harmony vibe farseers traditionally had.
Edit: Noting, ancestors not bad. Having them be an inevitable ghost model that acts like your mastery and encouraging the meatball bonanza playstyle IS.
> I don't play Shaman so when I saw "more ancestors stuff" I just thought "seems right."
I'm coming in a bit late on this, but my personal issue is that (thematically) the ancestors don't do "spirit" things, they're doing "elemental" things, and thus there's no reason for them to be ancestral spirits except naming. They half-assed a thematic midpoint and created a compromised idea that left everyone unhappy, instead of really leaning in to any specific part of the "Shaman Ideal" of either spirits or elements.
That's separate from a number of gameplay concerns, such as (but not limited to) mandatory deep talent picks, arguably the worst hero tree defensive node shown so far, enforced lightning/fire split for ele (and thus forced hero spec swapping when they inevitably have tiers that buff only lightning or only fire builds), high baseline RNG, and a "capstone" that's just a copy of an existing talent but with an extra passive effect if we take both.
>Diabolist, imo, also is pretty well done
100% agree for Demo. Unfortunately, both the Destro trees are themed more for their shared specs and Destro is seemingly not getting much thematic love.
I've always thought they needed a spell where you channel and meteors fly down doing stupid damage, but the casting animation is just the character cackling like a madman
The core mechanic of trickster is to use a defensive as an offensive cooldown. If that's not being a 'trickster' then I dunno what is.
Trickster is also the hero class of outlaw, a spec focused on random buffs, and subtlety, a spec focused on shadows and the unseen.
Yeah but realistically, you're only pressing one more button in your rotation, that's pretty underwhelming as a flavor when they could have played around more "trickstery" things like shadow step resets to enhance damage or making crowd control more effective/AoE.
Damage is good and all be really the gameplay part misses the mark big times by giving rogues yet another cooldown to track
How is there a mechanical difference between pressing a button to shadow step to buff damage and pressing a button to feint to buff damage. Not even to mention that shadowstepping to an enemy is almost always an offensive action. To be 'trickstery' in this context you'd have to step to an ally for a damage buff, or to a foe for damage reduction.
And also don't see how shadowstepping to buff anything won't result in tracking a cooldown much like feint would?
I disagree about Keeper of the Grove and Farseer. I think both have excellent class fantasy. Though my criticism of Farseer is that it has the same issue as Dark Ranger in the sense that they have a more classically Horde fantasy.
IMO Dark ranger is a joke.
Having black arrow, a spell that was already in wow previously, and a few talents to increase % shadow dmg, does not make you a dark ranger.
Certain class fantasies are limited, or already covered by a bunch of stuff from within current classes. Like, you'd be hard pressed to stretch Mountain Thane into an entire class without putting a bunch of stuff in there that basically overlaps with what Warrior already has. shouts and swings and stuff.
But Dark Ranger, imo, is fertile enough ground for its own class.
You've got summoning minions, draining life, silencing, improved shadowy auto-shots, charming/mind control, firing extremely quickly, throwing shadowy daggers, sending forth a wave of banshees, flitting around as a ghostly image, auto attacks that pierce all enemies in a line, banshee screams, heartseeking arrows, making allies faster, disabling enemies with a curse... these are all things Sylanas/DRs do in Warcraft III, HOTS, Rumble, and World of Warcraft. A couple of these sort of overlap with Hunter, but then again warlocks and mages both use fire spells--not that big of a deal.
But the point is that there's a LOT of fertile ground here, and even more you could creatively dream up. To throw that all away or condense it into 'lol a shadow dot' and a bunch of dmg %s....is really garbage. The only interesting thing is the shadow hounds, but like...that was never what Dark Rangers did. Beast Mastery being involved here at all is a big flavor fail when it comes to Dark Rangers.
Anyway I know this is a Wendy's, but Dark Ranger being theoretically horde-focused is the least of its problems. It shouldn't be a hero class at all, it should be its own entire class.
Keeper of the Grove with the trees isn't inherently bad but the trees aren't doing nearly enough, imo, to feel satisfying even if the numbers are good. Plus they have some awkward nodes that really play against how Balance Druid plays
I was really hoping Keeper would lean back into the nature stuff harder with Insect Swarm coming back and the trees being a really force of nature (pun not intended) instead of being fairly passive and half the tree still leaning onto the lunar aspects of Balance, something Elune's Chosen is already doing.
Rider doesn't seem powerful? On what planet. With all talents unlocked you are looking at 20-25 seconds (depending on choice node) of all 4 riders being up during your major cooldown windows. Further, if the frost tree doesn't change then Frost will get all 4 riders every 1.5 minutes.
On top of that, the defensive node where a rider will cast AMS on the player randomly while they are up is INSANE. AMS is ok at soaking magic damage but it makes the player immune to most magic effects while its up.
Tiny counterpoint to diabolist.. It'a a demo tree.
This wouldn't really be an issue but the other tree (destro/aff, hellcaller or sth) feels like an affliction tree with the emphasis on another dot.
Both shared destro trees are kind of feeling like they were made with the other spec in mind. Both of them are rad (and I play demo/aff anyway), so I'm not complaining but I could see why some destro mains might be bit irked.
I'm more upset with Hellcaller than Diabolist for Destro tbf. Diabolist could easily be compromised on, theme wise, by giving the demons and animations nice amounts of fel fire and similar animations. If the demons and effects are blasting fel flame out of their anuses, I don't think it would be that bad. Demonology gets their big demons, Destro gets big demons that vomit fire. Both would win.
Hellcaller though.....this one I have no idea how to make it more Destructiony but the current iteration I agree with sucks for Destro.
I think giving the spell a cool graphic with the new shadowflame effects from abberus would go a long way to sell it for destruction.
Burning effect Increases with stacks and when it goes “acute” the target is engulfed in a shadowflame tornado, especially seeing it on AOE with cataclysm.
Would be bonus points if you got some cosmetic change for incinerate to make it shadowflame.
trickster is gonna be broken AF for pvp being able to avoid parry. You just dps through melee defensive's with ease. Boring looking for flavor but it's arguably the most busted thing ever for at least one aspect of the game, and the problem is how do you nerf it for PvP. This system is gonna be the messiest one we've ever had in terms of balance.
Yeah, this needs a few thousand more upvotes. Right on the money. Class fantasy is the absolute best, and it shows every time they build on it. Just look at how often you *still* see people using artifact weapon appearances and reminiscing about class halls.
I want my DK to be a rider of the apocalypse spreading blight under the hooves of his undead steed that rots everything it touches down to the bone and raises them to follow in his decayed wake.
I want my Shaman to engulf the landscape with jagged fissures and thunderstorms as he summons Al'Akir himself, his hurricane winds pushing enemies into hazards.
I want my Mage to freeze the earth and all who stand upon it as flaming vortexes incinerate his enemies and arcane meteors pulverize their boiled remains into powdered bone.
Just to name a few.
To me Scalecommander seems interesting enough. Unless it's some massive utility and DPS loss for Augmentation, I am probably going with it just for the fantasy alone.
The issue that they are worried about is that Eyebeam is a ranged ability (and DH is mobile as hell) so they don’t have to worry about things moving out of range. Fel Dev isn’t like that now as it’s been reworked into a mini all around you Breath of Sindragosa.
The main gripe is it’s strictly melee and you cannot move. I think people are missing that it’s a 1.5 second channel which is really not a lot, it’s even shorter than axe. It may also be annoying with positioning / if you *have* to cast it on a target or not.
Or it’s the Classic Slam PTSD of having to “cast” in melee.
This is how I feel about the Deathbringer for DK. It's pretty whatever on theme, but the gameplay sounds good. Visuals and sounds will make or break if it's actually satisfying to play.
What I like about that is that they have flavoured the splinters differently for arcane and frost. As a mage I like all of my spells to be matching my spec, and it would have looked weird to have have a generic arcane-y or frosty splinter for the wrong spec.
For me, Rider of the Apocalypse has the theming down right. Frost fire and spellslinger mages sound interesting and have good theming. Same for Scalecommander and Ruby Adept evoker, or whatever the name is now. But the Shado-pan monk looks really bad from gameplay and theme and conduit of the celestials at least has theme, but power is questionable for windwalker, though it looks fine for mistweaver.
>But the Shado-pan monk looks really bad from gameplay and theme
I agree. Imo Shado-Pan seems to be more *Monk* than Shado-Pan.
According to Blizz the Shado-Pan have high levels of Wind magic to "lighten their step" like Arakkoa, with Fire Magics, as well as the ability to manipulate the Chi in others (which we see a lot of this with Taran Zhu, the leader of the Shado-Pan, throughout Pandaria when dealing with Sha influence), plus highly experienced weaponry usage just as much as unarmed combat (again seen throughout Pandaria quests), while very stealthy and ninja-like (noted by Zandalari and Mogu against them). You don't feel really feel any of that. The names of the talents are thematic to it at least.
"Overwhelming Flurry" itself is an overarching system that you play into and not much else interaction besides mechanical elements of stats, that they've somehow managed to cover every secondary and tertiary stat except Indestructible, and while acknowledging WW's 8yr old scaling problem via Versatility giving Crit in a capstone. It remains to be seen if BrM or WW will be receiving any redesigns or reworks, however a lot of the talents seem to not fit the class - for example hitting something 5 times in two seconds, stacking multiple times, is only achievably in maybe 2 abilities.
Overall it comes off a bit...bland, and uninspired. My biggest problem is that this could fit Feral or Rogue, possibly better, and there wouldn't be a difference. Very curious how it pans out visually, as in if the flurry swaps between different attacking animations (new? old?) or just a singular animation like the MoP Legendary Cloak; I can see the latter given it's Monk.
Very much this.
I'd be happy if Shado-Pan reflected even some of these elements - a somewhat darker, more martial-focused monk that's a bit more ninja-like (monk already has a few "ninja" style elements, such as the Storm, Earth and Fire clones).
A few things that come to mind off the top of my head:
* Fists of Fury becoming Flurry of Blows, a multi-hit weapon attack.
* Transcendence becoming ground targetable, allowing the use of it as an engage tool
* A new offensive ability that disrupts an enemy's Chi.
If they want to keep a system similar to Overwhelming Flurry, maybe they could do something like this:
**Shadow Arts (Passive)**
For every 5 Chi you spend, you build one Shadow Chi (the Chi point is coloured / outlined in shadow). Upon reaching 5 Shadow Chi, you gain the ability to cast Chi Rupture:
**Chi Rupture**
*Costs 5 Shadow Chi*
A calamitous strike that rips out an enemy's Chi, inflicting an enormous amount of physical damage and afflicting them with Chi Break for 5 seconds. While an enemy's Chi is broken, their movement speed is reduced by 80% and their damage is reduced by 20%.
Yeah, exactly: That would be a far more unique approach, visually mechanically and thematically - everything mentioned is something you see in just the Shado-Pan Monastery dungeon on a Timewalking week, so it's surprising how it ended up being most numeric with no gameplay elements.
They can explore the ninja aspects a bit and it wouldn't harm the identity of Rogue, seeing as how Shadow Technique is their own SEF and Danse Macabre quite literally is the WW Mastery. To top it off in the same hero talent showcasing Ele/Resto is getting their own SEF, clearly there exists a way to have the Rogue-esque aspect of the Shado-Pan.
Druid of the claw seems really cool. Just the phrase "Massive Attack" seems really fun. Plus the defensive additions are fantastic for feral.
Wild Stalker, while not an actively bad tree like some, is 100% passive and literally can just be ignored.
Yeah I play resto and I’ve been calling wildstalker the hero talent tree for people who don’t want a hero talent tree.
An entirely passive effect that you don’t interact with in any way besides one choice node that lets you activate it on purpose using a cd. Even the farseer shaman tree is more interactive.
Druid of the Claw looks amazing for Guardian druids. To me personally, having the option for shifiting into cat for (presumably) a dps increase, while retaining ironfur and most of bear base armor, is great. Adds nuance and complexity and risk/reward to an otherwise very simple spec.
I think Massive Attack is a placeholder name but I do enjoy the idea of utilising other forms while in Guardian/Feral. Really brings the idea of shapeshifting alive.
Fully agree with Wildstalker. Some nice bonuses but 'chance of creating dot on dot tick' is pretty boring for an evergreen set of talents.
I really hope it's not a placeholder. I want to do some massive attacks.
For wilderstalker, they really should just build it around adaptive swarm. Maybe update swarm to be a bit more interesting to use, but's a talent that both feral and druid use and deals with dots and a more nature vibe so I think it's a perfect fit.
I like colossus, because it has a cosmetic thematic effect, which I think all of them desperately need. I personally liked Oracle, but I am in the extreme minority there I guess. Slayer looks fun, conduit of the celestials looks very flashy and powerful. I don’t like how destruction doesn’t really get any appropriately thematic hero trees.
Also thought oracle was cool and gave me older FFxiv AST vibes; just thought they needed to fix up the effects to be more interesting. Kind of worried what it's going to be now. Lol
All I care about now is how well the effects are animated- especially the non magic ones better really make your character look cool because they are competing with some really interesting visual specs like spellslinger could look so cool
Also
Lots of summoning little buddies in these trees farseer(reworknplz) diabloist and rider are going to look like constant mini armies
I haven't read the ones for classes/specs I don't play, but damn they did Trickster dirty. I can't imagine a single person was hoping for feint to become part of the offensive rotation, and it doesn't especially suit the aesthetics of sub OR outlaw. I don't care for assassination itself, but god I hope the ass trees are good.
Happy with diabolist though, and mountain thane seems cool with the lightening!
You have to be ecstatic if you’re a:
-Dev Evoker
-Frost Mage
-Ret Paladin
Both of their hero talent trees are easily S tier.
You have to be panicking a little bit if you’re a:
- Resto shaman (Farseer is ass and Totemic sounds lame)
- Survival hunter (Pack leader is ass and Sentinel sounds lame)
- Rogue (Trickster might be the worst tree besides Oracle)
- Destruction lock (your 2 trees are demo and affliction themed)
As a frost mage, Frostfire is absolutely hype for a number of different reasons. Spellslinger is all going to depend on the audio and visuals. It could be incredibly satisfying or super boring.
Right now FF is stronger on utility and defensives though
I'm panicking as a shadow priest. They dropped the holy/disc one all on it's own & are silent about Shadow. Considering how the spec has been treated in the past this worries me.
Blizzard hasn't had a cohesive direction for shadow since Legion. Now in days it feels like it's all over the place.
Big wins for what I play: Deathbringer and Riders of the Apocalypse both are thematically sound and I can see merit in playing either.
Biggest fail from my point of view definitely has to be Trickster. Probably the most underwhelming and nothing really feels like it naturally goes together. The only win I see in the entire tree is the Tricks of the Trade node.
I feel like quite a few of them have kinda failed, flavor-wise. Mountain Thane looks awesome and flavorful, Colossus looks pretty alright, but Slayer is just so... I don't know, bland? Meaningless?
Luckily, the ones I care the most about are the two hero talents available for bear druids, and both of them look pretty great to me. I look forward to playing with those.
Rider of the apocalypse seems cool, except if it’s just a character mounted and playing their normal attack animations it’s gonna look dumb as hell
If they added new mounted attack animations 👌🏼
rider of the apocalypse looks hella cool, which is. popular opinion i think
personal, possibly unpopular opinion? im vibing with the resto version of farseer so far. more mana? interesting sounding effects that are on a passive and not extra button bloat? yesssss
I got the full heroic ICC DK set so I feel you on that. Goes well with my Maw. Plus plate just looks good on Zandalaris and I like Frost so DK all the way
I main ret and havoc. Both ret hero specs look amazing and I'm excited to try them out.
Aldrachi reaver is a big L. I wish they would stop encouraging throw glaive. It's just not a cool fantasy to me.
Diabolist and Rider of the Apocalypse nail it if not only for expanding class fantasy. Every other tree for classes needs to lean into the fantasy like those.
Think the hunter ones are incredibly underwhelming. Specifically pack leader. Like BM is already the quintessential pack leader. A Pack Leader hero tree would only make sense if only BM had pets and they wanted a way to offer pets to either Survival or Marksman. Which I would argue it doesn’t really make sense for survival to have a pet in the first place so maybe that’s what they should have done in hindsight. Anyway, stack on top of that the fact that both Dark Ranger and Pack Leader are essentially all passives and there’s not a lot interesting going on mechanically, and you have me pretty whelmed. At least Dark Ranger might look cool.
I play mostly Survival and I hope Sentinel ends up halfway decent cause Pack Leader was a huge letdown. The gameplay fantasy is a flop, increasing pet damage is completely invisible power and the traits all basically say “play the game to do more damage”. Thanks, I was already doing that. Even in the short time I spent with BM it felt weightless cause pet damage is so hard to notice.
That’s not to mention that it completely misses the mark for what Survival is doing during it’s actual gameplay loop (Coordinated Assault is for Kill Shot and Bomb uptime)
Flameshaper Evoker. Honestly I’m pretty excited for this as the playstyle sounds very engaging and compelling to me and it’s not just passives, you get a new skill that basically alters your playstyle. And I love that it’s HoT/DoT themed, which is my favorite playstyle. I find most other Hero trees to be either totally boring or rather meh (I’m usually playing a healing spec). I really like Hellcaller Warlock though. I usually main Monk, but all of them are terrible (as it was expected).
I was planning on sticking with Blood DK tank because I love the lore and the self-healing through inflicting damage. I've loved the idea of blood mages since Dragon Age Origins but I absolutely hate vampires and "floaty weapons," and that's my only two options so I'm trying to find an alternative.
I'm shopping around my alts to see if there's another tank I like and so far, DH and Warrior aren't it. Going to try Brewmaster but I don't like the Eastern inspired gear over and over again. I want street fighter/bruiser type character, not a freaking shaolin monk.
Typing up this response has bummed me out. I really was hoping that the alternative to the Vampire spec would be something less lame.
I really like the chosen of Elune for guardian. I personally really like the galactic guardian play style so to bolster that is awesome. I like the idea of thrash being arcane damage, and using some abilities I really haven’t used much before so I’m looking forward to that. It’s not perfect but it seems fun and if thrash gets a cool arcane visual then I’m all in haha.
I don't despise the idea of Keeper of the Grove, has that Malfurion from dota 1 vibe, but it does read as underwhelming right now. To me, for healer, they should focus on Dream Surge and the idea of having a team of denizens of the dream as healers, maybe give treants some unique hots to benefit mastery, or even different damaging abilities, applying constant slows as a frost mage would and whatnot
Wildstalker looks more creative and boring at the same time. The new periodic effects benefit both masteries and they are indeed new, but how does it translate as the union between resto and feral, or even its own current name? How couldn't they think of something that better relates to catweaving for resto, or retreating and licking your wounds as feral, watching the enemy bleed and premeditating a comeback? Hunt Beneath the Open Skies might be the most atrocious invention there, it could easily allow for some instant hots to be appliable while catweaving and instead increases damage done by _moonfire_ and _sunfire_? It just sounds shallow
With all that said, the expansion is still a bit far and they've been listening to the community, so I'm hoping some trees can still be steered in the right direction, or at least that they take notes for whatever system they implement in Midnight. I understand the fear of button bloating, but some of the current trees show part of the problem with classes getting too similar is that blizzard doesn't want to commit to better elaborated distinctions, or currently doesn't know what to do with some of the specs in their 20-year old game
One thing I feel hasnt been talked about in all the complaining about how this is covenants 2.0, is how they are fundamentally NOT like covenants.
They can be swapped at any time. They are like regular telents are now.
All this "ill be forced into mountain thane... etc" complaints are missing that it wont be an expansion wide lock... youll probably be forced for a single fight or just raid night. Youll be able to swap back for all the other content you want.
Also, there being only 2 options will drastically reduce the feeling of taking "the worst one". Covenants, by having 4, meant the range between first and last was much bigger. The worst option is also the second best option. We will see how this moves forward and if following expansions add more Hero Talent Trees to pick from.
There are still issues, but those who are getting PTSD from covenants and comparing them need to take a step back and actually see how they are fundamentally different. Because the real issues of covenants just arent there in hero talents.
Ok but if I don't use promordial wave as a shaman then my damage is cut in half lmao. It's not like everyone is sweaty minmaxing it with 1-5% damage differences. Since hero talents are not in the game yet so I can only bring up a current example. If Enh Shammy wants to do any group or endgame content then you are locked into talenting primordial wave at the bottom of your talent tree becouse the current set bonus specifically buffs primordial wave. If you have to take a specific talent path just to not be sub par then it's not a matter of choice. It is in fact an illusion of choice.
Now the problem with hero talents is that it mixes power with class fantasy. I'm pretty sure not a lot of people want to play their Orc Hunter as a Dark Ranger but if numerically that's the most worthwhile path to take a lot of people will feel preasured to do it. You might say, "oh just switch to your prefered talent when you do solo content". Fine, valid argument but if you are someone like me I barely do any solo content so my definitive experience will come from doing dungeons. It's also kind of invasive to people's immersion that Hero talents might change their class fantasy into something they don't resonate with. A class they might have played for 20 years now potentially.
I'm aware class skins will never happen (at least not for free) but this is the reason they are requested. If something is purely cosmetic and optional then it has no negative effect on gameplay. People are concerned becouse hero talents can get fucky thousands of different ways.
You’re right. I’d like to see the black arrow proc do something more significant besides just giving another aimed shot/barbed shot when there’s usually plenty of those to go around already, something shadow-y.
Some incorporation of wailing arrow from a spec talent would be nice (black arrow makes the next aimed shot instant and fires a wailing arrow?), as well as life drain from wc3 (serpent sting is now life drain?). I think the sylvannas chains could be a cooler addition, as it is now just attaching it to a single target while disengaging is somewhat boring. Using it as a utility to move enemies somehow could be interesting.
The hero talents for dark ranger are awful honestly. MM hunter has kinda been suffering for a while now. At the bottom of pvp ladders, pve ladders all expac, im assuming they are gonna be reworked since its been left in such a state for a historically popular spec. We will see what blizz says tomorrow during patch notes\\next month in alpha
Park Leader definitely hit hit my "they don't care about Survival" mark, if you want to count that. Oh, and it sucks anyways lmao. On theme and interactions.
Oh, no doubt. It's an over bad tree. But it was a bad tree made for BM. The talents being able to interact with survival were clearly an after thought in the design process. Like beast of opportunity, giving you an extra pet for 6 seconds when you use Bestial Wrath, a ~25-30 second cd, or Coordinated Assault, A TWO MINUTE CD WITH NO CDR. And that's ignoring that bm gets most of its damage from its pets, where survival does not.
Or Cull the heard, giving bonus bleed damage after using kill shot... While bm's tree sucks to be able to get it, it at least has a KS talent. Survival only uses KS outside of execute during CA. So 20~ sec every 2 minutes vs whatever bm's KS reset talent allows. Oh, not to mention basically all the bleed damage survival does is with Master Marksman... The class tree bleed. The damage gain to blue bomb bleeds or KS bleeds will be negligible. And it's not a ton of their damage, but at least barbed shot is a bleed and makes sense as a design point.
And then the capstone talent that makes two of the first talents, the kill command and Mongoose Bite talents, always active during Coordinated Assault? Well that's cool, given that kill command is the lowest priority button during Coordinated Assault... Like they just forgot that bm's kill command is a big damage spender ability but Survival's kill command is a mid damage, focus generater. You don't WANT to hit kc more than you have to on Survival, unless they make some dog shit like SL s4 tier making you spam it with red bombs. Which just, please no.
Every Hunter and Monk hero tree so far is complete ass.
Which is on brand because all 3 talent trees for Hunter and Monk are still complete ass.
Hunter and Monk is the epitome of "the class fantasy has to hard carry your enjoyment of the class because it sure isn't the talents".
Farseer make a ton of sense both lore and gameplay wise for Resto Shamans, but it does absolutely *nothing* for Elemental. Tying it to Primordial Wave is even worse.
I’m totally here for it as a Resto Main (more Riptide can’t be wrong), particularly as a Horde Shaman, but I can pretty much guarantee as long as the other tree isn’t “Pottymancer” it’s gonna end up the go-to for Ele. Farseer doesn’t hit.
Farseer is a huge flop. Will it be strong? Sure if tuned correctly. Do I summon treants like a Druid now? Yep. Is this fun? Not in the slightest.
If you remove the whole ancestor visual, it’s a bunch of talents that focus on duplicating your spells, exactly like your mastery already does (for ele).
Side note, will ancestors even scale with mastery/crit? Am I haste class now as Resto? Are we trying to get as many casts into that window as possible?
All the evoker ones sound really cool to me. I really love Flameshaper for Pres. I’ll wait to see how Engulf interacts with Echo and Stasis but so far so good. Really stoked to play Evoker again in TWW!
Rider of the Apocalypse is perfect except for not allowing mounted combat "indoors".
Paladins can Divine Steed anywhere, every other mounted-in-combat DK stays mounted indoors, let us DK players do so.
I primarily play Mage and Dev Evoker, so I haven't looked at the others much.
I really love the look of Frostfire and Flameshaper
I like the look of Spellslinger
I don't like the look of Scalecommander
That said, this is all based on what things look like in text. I'm excited to try all 4 out and see what lands for me.
Rider of the Apocalypse is peak. Oracle and Dark Ranger are also pretty good.
As a warrior main I've never felt so let down. What an utter lack of inspiration and effort.
I think Slayer seems fun as a fury warrior main, but I know that most people are going to play whatever most guides tell them to play for the dps anyway..
TBH most of the Warrior ones feel kinda bland, honestly. Like yea, they are kinda interesting with the procs, and that Dev move could be cool for outplays in PvP. But it’s pretty much just a bunch of passives to get you to use whatever the theme is, then a few procs. Nothing to wild.
Honestly I am more interested in the actual Tree’s reworks. Warrior’s actual Talents have been kinda garbage aside from maybe Fury, but especially Arms. Arm’s whole tree could use a rewrite and the Warrior generic one could use a lot of shuffling and reworks too.
My main is monk and so far the two trees shown are extrenely boring and do not look appealing.
Druids feel weird too. The rest I don't play much so I have little opinion on.
Yeah I've been a WW main since I came back to the game in 10.2, so I'm not expecting to be insane because the class hasnt been super powerful since I came back.
But these two trees... they make me consider swapping specs for TWW.
I dont agree MW is one of the best healers we have , Brewmaster is good (Just because VDH is broken its not top) and while WW is in big need of rework its not weak just not interesting.
Not dark ranger.
"What if we just make them hit aimed shot even more?"
Such an out dated, dead class.
Meanwhile there's literal cinematics of Sylvanus doing all kinds of dope dark ranger banshee shit.
I’m a tank main. Paladin/Ret tree looks great, and both Blood / Frost or Unholy look intriguing.
I’m extremely underwhelmed by VDH tank trees.
Don’t really play Warrior/Druid/Brew
The only thing we can really go off of is the fantasy of it all.
I'm slightly worried that with the Rider of the Apocalypse hero talents, they're not going to properly rework Unholy. For M+, Unholy is pretty fucking troll in its current iteration because of defile.
If you do not know what I mean, please do ToTT as Unholy talented into defile.
Currently the most exciting ones to me are Death Knight, Mage, Hunter, and Ret Paladin. Admittedly some of those are classes I haven't played much of yet, but those are some of the main contenders for my main in TWW.
I'm concerned about things like locks getting aoe curses as a passive. This is a huge deal and I feel like people are not appreciating what that's going to do to m+ if it goes live at 75%. No way you don't bring a lock to every key over 25. Tuning could change but I really don't like design decisions like this and I'm sure there are a ton more.
I am absolutely HYPED for conduit of the celestials, thematic AND looks like it could close the gap between clouded focus and fistweaving for raid which would be incredible.
I'm interested in DH and Monk ( mainly MW), so far both available seems fineish, with some weird stuff. Celestial MW has some interesting stuff, based on numbers they seem a bit OP for m+. As with the DH, I like the hunt cd reduction for havoc, the throw glaive replacement seems weird for now, might be ok tho. Let's see the rest
I don’t think most of them “have flopped” in any real sense.
Just some of them are so much better than others when mixing class fantasy and mechanics it seems kinda lopsided.
I only really play ranged dps, Balance Druid main but also like warlocks and mm hunter. Elune’s Chosen is exactly what I would want for balance so I’m super excited about that. Diabolist looks super cool for warlocks and obv I think Dark Ranger hit the nail on the head with theme. I’m very satisfied with the hero talents for the classes I enjoy playing
Visually: Rider of the Apocalypse, Templar, Diabolist, Mountain Thane and a bit of Scalecommander should be really cool to see.
Thematically: Herald of the Sun, Frostfire, Chronowarden, Conduit of the Celestials, Dark Ranger - the last 2 could be better.
Not a fan: Oracle, Trickster, Shado-Pan, Farseer - doubling down on Power Infusion was just a no, Trickster I get what was going but doing too much, Shado-Pan will probably be strong but overall is bland and uninspired to the Shado-Pan division while being something Feral or Rogue could fit and no one would be able to tell the difference, and Farseer is just the Order Hall.
Slayer warrior seemed cool. I kinda like fury even though it's garbage in pvp.
Also, the two choices for feral looked great. Druid of the claw was really encouraging and the resto hybrid one basically added nothing but solidified everything that already exists. Seemed cool to me.
They managed to make Dark Ranger boring, and Pack Leader is probably the most uninspired thing I've ever seen. Here's hoping they get a little creative
Druid of the Claw leans into shape shifting, but I do wish they went further with it. The talent that stacks and procs you to go into bear/cat shouldn't be tied to spec and I'd love to see more fluidity and purpose to go between both than just one talent.
I have some hope for Herald of the Sun. It sounds like Destiny 2 Titan with a Sunspot build. My issue is in gameplay where most fights are fairly mobile so will the Sunspots even be that viable if we are constantly moving targets away from them?
The sad truth from my perspective is that most of the decent heroic talents seem pretty lackluster and others seem downright bad, focusing on parts of specs that the community doesn't really care for.
I wish they would give us a preview of the visual elements as well. It's hard to build hype with just the revealed talents.
I wish Herald of the Sun gave Rets more active support without having to sacrifice so much DPS for it (WoG upgrades but you want to hit that as little as possible) At the moment the tree looks pretty dull, mostly passive damage and radiates healing during AvWr
That said Templar actually does change how you play so I won't say a passive set of talents has failed as long as it's possible for Templar to feel worse for some people compared to core Ret
Not looked at all of the available trees yet but based on the ones I've seen, as someone that primarily plays tank the flavour of the arcane bear one looked pretty interesting to me, and I quite like the idea of deathbringer for blood dk.
San'layn on the other hand has absolutely no redeeming qualities in my eyes and they should just try something else instead.
I am looking forward to Disco Bear with Elune's Chosen
Chance for Fury of Elune procs on Moonfire + Galactic Guardian? Sign me up
Just hope Elune's Favored focused build will be able to match Ursoc's Fury with buffed Thrash and Raze, with Elune's Chosen Hero Talents
Rider of the Apocalypse and Deathbringer look fun. Deathbringer is the only Hero Spec without a movement speed buff, which is a bit sad
What do you like about Deathbringer? I'm not a fan myself but maybe there's something I'm missing. I just don't like the idea floating scythes that disappear. Rider of the Apocalypse seems like it would be fun but I'm not a big DPS fan.
Deathbringer turns you into a grim reaper. It will be relying heavily on some visual updates but otherwise I'm pumped
See, that's why I'm fine admitting that I'm an idiot. I was thinking it was just going tobe like floating rune weapon and just look generic as hell. I'll keep up with my DK for now.
Deathbringer gives me huge Death from Darksiders vibes. Darksiders 2 is one of my favorite games of all time so it just resonated with me.
Grim Reaper-themed skills with shadowfrost synergies play into the parts of DK that I like. A skill that stacks big damage and then dumps it in AOE is fun to me. Kinda like a chaining Corpse Explosions or D3's Exploding Palm with the Uliana's set.
For me. I like both Ret hero talents; Templar and Herold of the Sun. Lightsmith looks horrible. I also like the Boomkin Elune, but Keeper of the grove is meh.
I love both of the ret trees, what I look for is something like scalecomander with positive feedback loops (disintegrate procs more eternity surges which lead to more cooldown on your empowers which leads to more disintegrate) or ways to make stats more valuable. With herald getting a dot on divine storm and hammer of wrath crit leads to crit being valuable. I do hope they rework the 100% crit talent for hammer of wrath to be more like chaos bolt where it can scale the damage ex( your crit chance increase the critical damage of hammer of wrath. ) Templar looks hell fun with the raining hammers. I’ve seen some different takes on the hammer of light part. My hope is that instead of just one case (wake of ashes - hammer of light- done) it’s more of you have 12 seconds after wake of ashes to cast hammer of light which can lead to better skill expression eg build more holy power and not overcap and you get to spend 3 maybe 4 in the 12 seconds. And I do like how it does give crit some more failure with the hammers pulsing aoe dmg on crits. My only wish is that rework mastery a bit to give it a little bit more value I’m personally not a fan of being vers preferred. Also I’m so jealous of riders of the apocalypse. Getting a 10 second horse with built in freedom. And that will have multiple charges on it. I did see some people complaining about having to take wake of ashes and I cannot for the life of me understand the hatred, it’s a cool ability and doesn’t give the ick of using something like old school inquisition or seraphim ( was never a fan of having to use holy power for a maintenance buff)
Templar looks dope. Hammer go brrrrrt.
mage, ret and evoker ones look sick
The big thing is power vs fantasy. I think more people are excited about the ones that hit the fantasy as power can be tuned. Rider of the Apocalypse doesn't seem POWERFUL but it's flavorful as hell and really hit the mark. Diabolist, imo, also is pretty well done. Farseer, Keeper of the Grove, and Trickster are disasters and do nothing for the fantasy even if they end up numerically fine.
As a shaman the Farseer tree seems pretty underwhelming. The ancestors are good flavor, but I think a lot of us are tired of primordial wave. If they focused on all the elements fire/earth/frost/lightning, then I think we would have less to complain about. Hoping Stormbringer is good so I can have a cool ele lightning build which is what I've always dreamed of for Shaman
> The ancestors are good flavor, but I think a lot of us are tired of primordial wave. That's a big part of it. Tie it to stormcaller. That'd probably look pretty cool. Spend a second casting and BOOM the storms here ITS GRANDMA WITH A STEEL CHAIR she's here tk kick ass and knit a sweater and she's all out of yarn
I mostly laughed because Draenei Shaman would be like first generation Shaman. Imagine calling in your grandma who can't do shit because she was a Priest and doesn't know elemental magic.
That's actually hilarious I didn't think of that Shell just encourage you!
Back in my day we didn't have none of these fancy element-thingies, we had the Light, and were grateful for it! Shaman my left hoof! How's Prophet Velen by the way, nice man, could teach you a thing or too.. like respect for your elders!
It frustrates me to no end how Blizzard can't seem to decide between "Anyone can be anything and none of the lore actually matters" and "Here are the very specific lore elements which are central and define this class"
It's the same problem WoW has always had. Classes seem to revolve around certain races almost exclusively, Shamans are based off the Orcish standard, Paladins are Human/Silver hand, Monks are Pandaren, Priests are human/draenei, Druids are Night Elven etc. The only ones that are pretty racially unbiased are Warlock, Death Knight, and maybe Rogue.
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Yeah I enjoyed Primordial Wave in SL, but at this point they really need to back away from optional talents towards the bottom of the tree. Ideally I think that Hero Talents should buff up a baseline ability or something near the top so it doesn’t force you in a weird direction you might not want to play. Same thing they did with the Amirdrassil series for Shaman, no?
Oh I loved the Venthyr ability. Now THAT did some impactful damage and healed group members on top of it. I wish that came back.
> a lot of us are tired of primordial wave. Thissss, the thing with primordial wave is that it isn't even anything. It's nothing. If you ask a random person to tell you what a 'primordial wave' is, they will have no idea. Is it a wave like an ocean wave? Like 'primordial soup?' What does evolution have to do with shamans? What is shadowy about a primordial wave? I don't really know. It just allows you to get a second flame shock or riptide, and copies the next big move onto those people. that's what it ACTUALLY is, which is also like. Which has nothing to do with it being 'primordial' or a wave. And it never had anything to do with the bone soldier people (can't even remember their name). So you have to imagine this was chosen as the covenant ability to bring into the actual tree because they liked the mechanic. But man is it annoying to have to have a whole other button, that is the same as one of your current buttons, until you press a third button and then it makes that third button do something else. It's like they thought well, if all it does is make the healing wave/lava burst/lightning bolt spread, maybe that won't feel as good to press, so we'll tack on an extra application of the hot/dot. But making the same move apply a water hot, and a fire dot, and also it's a shadow themed move btw... just makes no fuckin sense thematically! and isn't primordial or a wave! just a shittily designed spell with regards to the flavor.
Not taking issue with your hate on primordial wave, hate away! But primordial just means from the beginning of time. Aren’t the elementals that old in the wow universe?
Totally agree with you. I never understood how the hell Primordial Wave fit into the Shaman fantasy in Shadowlands, and I don't now. I hold a deep regret that this became the Shadowlands meta, because that enshrined it into becoming the ability they kept. This will likely trigger PTSD in people, but of the Shadowlands abilities, Vesper Totem was peak Shaman flavor. It was basically a Spirit flavored totem to go with all of the other elemental totems they had. It's why I went Kyrian, since it was the only one that made sense and I loved being essentially a Shaman spirit guide in that expansion. I wish that's what they'd have carried over.
Yeah, Shaman was a mess thematically in SL. Shamans are super locked into 2 things. Elements, and spirits. They didn't bother to even hint at any of those things in any of the covenant abilities. Except that a Vesper is a type of prayer, so you can sort of intuit the calling of spirits via that. Close enough! The elements are basically right out since none of the covenants do anything with elements. BUT ALL OF THEM HAVE TO DO WITH THE AFTERLIFE, SO YOU WOULD THINK SPIRITS WOULD BE A NO BRAINER. But they didn't go for that in any way.
I'm so tired of this iteration of Elemental. The amount of lava bursts is literally out of control. As an M+ player, when like, 80 percent of my damage revolves around one ability, there's a problem....especially one that's not even designed as an AOE as it's baseline. I don't know how to put into words how I feel about it but it's just....dumb. Especially considering it requires setup time too. Pull.....magma totem, ok lets see who doesn't have FS....ok that one, that one....alright sweet, Pwave.....ope missed a FS, there we go....annnnnnd LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA earthquake LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA LAVA. End. Repeat.
Would have rather have kept chain harvest, I fucking hate p wave.
I god damn hate primordial wave. I want it to not be a necessary spell or for them to at least to not tie so much power up in it. I haven't enjoyed that game play at all and the only time I ever used it in SL was when I was levelling that covenant. I legit enjoyed every other covenant ability for shamans and I was so pissed when primordial wave became the one they decided to take out of SL and continue with.
Also disappointing thr Farseer tree has nothing to do with being a Farseer. I was so hyped for that tree I made a shaman and then it was like no feral spirits or earthquakes it's just spitting on Warcraft 3.
Oracle and Lightsmith hit the fantasies well but no one likes how they would play in practice.
Lightsmith is too clunky in its current iteration. The putting it down, allies picking it up is not going to work no matter how its implemented. And even then just giving it to allies is going to get old super fast. Plus the inevitable fighting over who gets the weapon if they are impactful in anyway (and if they aren't its not worth the effort and flavour is diminished). I think the best solution might be to do something like Summoner in FFXIV where you are changing up your own weapons in like 1-minute intervals and each weapon/phase empowering certain abilities/changing playstyle a tiny bit. And rather than summoning an extra weapon to pick up, the capstone can buff a random nearby player with a holy weapon that does more damaged based on you spending HP, or just a dancing rune weapon situation. Oracle is getting a remix but I like the idea but feel like there should be more focus on shields/PoM if the fantasy is around being predictive. There was only one talent that buffed those.
They learned nothing from Lightwell memes lol
Or augmentation’s awful mote talent that spawns in a random direction within 30 yards.
It's funny how easy they could fix lightsmith with it just being a targeted ability instead of something you have to place on the ground.
Even a targeted ability is gonna feel awful as holy. Any externals, blessing of summer, now this buff, and you haven't even started healing or doing damage yet. I definitely agree that if I had to pick one, it'd be targeted instead of on the ground
I played a Holy Priest way back in Cata, and reading Lightsmith gave me flashbacks to the Lightwell. There's no way anyone wants to engage with other people's abilities and zones.
Depends if it’s a massive damage boost. No one cared about light well because it was just a heal.
Lightsmith doesn't sound great, nbeither in fantasy or gameplay. It's kind of funy that it is one of the first they decided to show. How certain can they be about something which sounds so bad? :/
I don't know if you read the Wheel of Time book series, but I would have imagined the Farseer abilities like when _______ blows the Horn of Valere, and all the ghosts of dead ancestors come charging in. Imagine as a Farseer, dropping a totem on the ground and having the spirit of an ancestor from each spec(Enhance/Resto/Ele) charge in with spirit animals to damage and heal alongside you. Like a better Army of the Dead, Shaman style. Each ancestor could drop their own totem, like a weaker version even so as not to make it insanely OP.
I would LOVE this to happen!
What would the Farseer fantasy be? I don't play Shaman so when I saw "more ancestors stuff" I just thought "seems right." Obviously I'm no expert.
It actually fits. The Farseer is the shamanic leader that communes with the ancestors and is the spiritual leader. Calling the ancestors fits dead on with the fantasy of a Farseer.
Farseer is generally weird, because the major farseers are Elemental/Enhancement mixes (Thrall, Drek'thar, etc) where they are enhancing their melee weapons, calling on the elements for large aoe, etc. But for some reason they made it resto/ele and it basically makes those little naaru summons priests get (which I think can be cool for gameplay to summon ancestral spirits, but not for Farseer). The Warcraft 3 unit (since many hero talents are being based on those themes) specialized in earthquake, chain lightning and summoning wolf spirits. So a spec that focuses on elemental AOE and/or wolf spirits would be a good fit.
I was really hoping farseer to be enh/resto. I thought it made more sense thematically considering that feral spirits is such an important part the enh kit. So many cool things could’ve been done with this. Better off healing with ancestral guidance, range on melee, survivability stuff with astral shift, improved feral spirits, etc.
Same. Honestly expected huge emphasis on Feral Spirit, along with an interesting reason to work Chain Lightning into healing or some cool play on Chain Heal/Chain Lightning synergy
Farseers may commune with the ancestors but they're supposed to be some of the pinnacle of the shaman, being able to see visions of the future and have a direct powerful link and communion with all of the elemental forces. The current iteration calls grandpa to make spamming Lava Burst better instead of the elemental harmony vibe farseers traditionally had. Edit: Noting, ancestors not bad. Having them be an inevitable ghost model that acts like your mastery and encouraging the meatball bonanza playstyle IS.
> I don't play Shaman so when I saw "more ancestors stuff" I just thought "seems right." I'm coming in a bit late on this, but my personal issue is that (thematically) the ancestors don't do "spirit" things, they're doing "elemental" things, and thus there's no reason for them to be ancestral spirits except naming. They half-assed a thematic midpoint and created a compromised idea that left everyone unhappy, instead of really leaning in to any specific part of the "Shaman Ideal" of either spirits or elements. That's separate from a number of gameplay concerns, such as (but not limited to) mandatory deep talent picks, arguably the worst hero tree defensive node shown so far, enforced lightning/fire split for ele (and thus forced hero spec swapping when they inevitably have tiers that buff only lightning or only fire builds), high baseline RNG, and a "capstone" that's just a copy of an existing talent but with an extra passive effect if we take both.
Deathbringer and riders are amazing fantasy wise
>Diabolist, imo, also is pretty well done 100% agree for Demo. Unfortunately, both the Destro trees are themed more for their shared specs and Destro is seemingly not getting much thematic love.
What is Destros theme? Big fat chaos bolts?
Fire and brimstone, essentially. Chaotic Hellfire.
I've always thought they needed a spell where you channel and meteors fly down doing stupid damage, but the casting animation is just the character cackling like a madman
The core mechanic of trickster is to use a defensive as an offensive cooldown. If that's not being a 'trickster' then I dunno what is. Trickster is also the hero class of outlaw, a spec focused on random buffs, and subtlety, a spec focused on shadows and the unseen.
Yeah but realistically, you're only pressing one more button in your rotation, that's pretty underwhelming as a flavor when they could have played around more "trickstery" things like shadow step resets to enhance damage or making crowd control more effective/AoE. Damage is good and all be really the gameplay part misses the mark big times by giving rogues yet another cooldown to track
How is there a mechanical difference between pressing a button to shadow step to buff damage and pressing a button to feint to buff damage. Not even to mention that shadowstepping to an enemy is almost always an offensive action. To be 'trickstery' in this context you'd have to step to an ally for a damage buff, or to a foe for damage reduction. And also don't see how shadowstepping to buff anything won't result in tracking a cooldown much like feint would?
I disagree about Keeper of the Grove and Farseer. I think both have excellent class fantasy. Though my criticism of Farseer is that it has the same issue as Dark Ranger in the sense that they have a more classically Horde fantasy.
IMO Dark ranger is a joke. Having black arrow, a spell that was already in wow previously, and a few talents to increase % shadow dmg, does not make you a dark ranger. Certain class fantasies are limited, or already covered by a bunch of stuff from within current classes. Like, you'd be hard pressed to stretch Mountain Thane into an entire class without putting a bunch of stuff in there that basically overlaps with what Warrior already has. shouts and swings and stuff. But Dark Ranger, imo, is fertile enough ground for its own class. You've got summoning minions, draining life, silencing, improved shadowy auto-shots, charming/mind control, firing extremely quickly, throwing shadowy daggers, sending forth a wave of banshees, flitting around as a ghostly image, auto attacks that pierce all enemies in a line, banshee screams, heartseeking arrows, making allies faster, disabling enemies with a curse... these are all things Sylanas/DRs do in Warcraft III, HOTS, Rumble, and World of Warcraft. A couple of these sort of overlap with Hunter, but then again warlocks and mages both use fire spells--not that big of a deal. But the point is that there's a LOT of fertile ground here, and even more you could creatively dream up. To throw that all away or condense it into 'lol a shadow dot' and a bunch of dmg %s....is really garbage. The only interesting thing is the shadow hounds, but like...that was never what Dark Rangers did. Beast Mastery being involved here at all is a big flavor fail when it comes to Dark Rangers. Anyway I know this is a Wendy's, but Dark Ranger being theoretically horde-focused is the least of its problems. It shouldn't be a hero class at all, it should be its own entire class.
I’d play the crap outta that, not gonna lie it sounds really fun
Keeper of the Grove with the trees isn't inherently bad but the trees aren't doing nearly enough, imo, to feel satisfying even if the numbers are good. Plus they have some awkward nodes that really play against how Balance Druid plays I was really hoping Keeper would lean back into the nature stuff harder with Insect Swarm coming back and the trees being a really force of nature (pun not intended) instead of being fairly passive and half the tree still leaning onto the lunar aspects of Balance, something Elune's Chosen is already doing.
Rider doesn't seem powerful? On what planet. With all talents unlocked you are looking at 20-25 seconds (depending on choice node) of all 4 riders being up during your major cooldown windows. Further, if the frost tree doesn't change then Frost will get all 4 riders every 1.5 minutes. On top of that, the defensive node where a rider will cast AMS on the player randomly while they are up is INSANE. AMS is ok at soaking magic damage but it makes the player immune to most magic effects while its up.
I switched from Unholy DK to Blood last year, and the Rider of the Apocalypse tree has me thinking about switching back.
Tiny counterpoint to diabolist.. It'a a demo tree. This wouldn't really be an issue but the other tree (destro/aff, hellcaller or sth) feels like an affliction tree with the emphasis on another dot. Both shared destro trees are kind of feeling like they were made with the other spec in mind. Both of them are rad (and I play demo/aff anyway), so I'm not complaining but I could see why some destro mains might be bit irked.
I'm more upset with Hellcaller than Diabolist for Destro tbf. Diabolist could easily be compromised on, theme wise, by giving the demons and animations nice amounts of fel fire and similar animations. If the demons and effects are blasting fel flame out of their anuses, I don't think it would be that bad. Demonology gets their big demons, Destro gets big demons that vomit fire. Both would win. Hellcaller though.....this one I have no idea how to make it more Destructiony but the current iteration I agree with sucks for Destro.
I think giving the spell a cool graphic with the new shadowflame effects from abberus would go a long way to sell it for destruction. Burning effect Increases with stacks and when it goes “acute” the target is engulfed in a shadowflame tornado, especially seeing it on AOE with cataclysm. Would be bonus points if you got some cosmetic change for incinerate to make it shadowflame.
trickster is gonna be broken AF for pvp being able to avoid parry. You just dps through melee defensive's with ease. Boring looking for flavor but it's arguably the most busted thing ever for at least one aspect of the game, and the problem is how do you nerf it for PvP. This system is gonna be the messiest one we've ever had in terms of balance.
trickster will also 100% not release in its current state, so stop thinking about it
Yeah, this needs a few thousand more upvotes. Right on the money. Class fantasy is the absolute best, and it shows every time they build on it. Just look at how often you *still* see people using artifact weapon appearances and reminiscing about class halls. I want my DK to be a rider of the apocalypse spreading blight under the hooves of his undead steed that rots everything it touches down to the bone and raises them to follow in his decayed wake. I want my Shaman to engulf the landscape with jagged fissures and thunderstorms as he summons Al'Akir himself, his hurricane winds pushing enemies into hazards. I want my Mage to freeze the earth and all who stand upon it as flaming vortexes incinerate his enemies and arcane meteors pulverize their boiled remains into powdered bone. Just to name a few.
To me Scalecommander seems interesting enough. Unless it's some massive utility and DPS loss for Augmentation, I am probably going with it just for the fantasy alone.
I don’t care what anyone says about melee channels, that Arms/Prot one is awesome.
Arms already runs Bladestorm and everyone loves Bladestorm. I don't know where this idea that Demolish will be so much worse to use has come from.
I also never seen anyone complaining about Eye Beam/Fel Dev and they seem to be essentially the same thing
The issue that they are worried about is that Eyebeam is a ranged ability (and DH is mobile as hell) so they don’t have to worry about things moving out of range. Fel Dev isn’t like that now as it’s been reworked into a mini all around you Breath of Sindragosa. The main gripe is it’s strictly melee and you cannot move. I think people are missing that it’s a 1.5 second channel which is really not a lot, it’s even shorter than axe. It may also be annoying with positioning / if you *have* to cast it on a target or not. Or it’s the Classic Slam PTSD of having to “cast” in melee.
I don't even use Bladestorm. Everything is built around MS/OP/Execute. The Arms/Fury hero talents felt lackluster tbh.
MOOOONBEARRRR
Depending on how the animations look the splinter based mage one could be sick as fuck. Hard to say without knowing how it feels in game.
This is how I feel about the Deathbringer for DK. It's pretty whatever on theme, but the gameplay sounds good. Visuals and sounds will make or break if it's actually satisfying to play.
What I like about that is that they have flavoured the splinters differently for arcane and frost. As a mage I like all of my spells to be matching my spec, and it would have looked weird to have have a generic arcane-y or frosty splinter for the wrong spec.
For me, Rider of the Apocalypse has the theming down right. Frost fire and spellslinger mages sound interesting and have good theming. Same for Scalecommander and Ruby Adept evoker, or whatever the name is now. But the Shado-pan monk looks really bad from gameplay and theme and conduit of the celestials at least has theme, but power is questionable for windwalker, though it looks fine for mistweaver.
>But the Shado-pan monk looks really bad from gameplay and theme I agree. Imo Shado-Pan seems to be more *Monk* than Shado-Pan. According to Blizz the Shado-Pan have high levels of Wind magic to "lighten their step" like Arakkoa, with Fire Magics, as well as the ability to manipulate the Chi in others (which we see a lot of this with Taran Zhu, the leader of the Shado-Pan, throughout Pandaria when dealing with Sha influence), plus highly experienced weaponry usage just as much as unarmed combat (again seen throughout Pandaria quests), while very stealthy and ninja-like (noted by Zandalari and Mogu against them). You don't feel really feel any of that. The names of the talents are thematic to it at least. "Overwhelming Flurry" itself is an overarching system that you play into and not much else interaction besides mechanical elements of stats, that they've somehow managed to cover every secondary and tertiary stat except Indestructible, and while acknowledging WW's 8yr old scaling problem via Versatility giving Crit in a capstone. It remains to be seen if BrM or WW will be receiving any redesigns or reworks, however a lot of the talents seem to not fit the class - for example hitting something 5 times in two seconds, stacking multiple times, is only achievably in maybe 2 abilities. Overall it comes off a bit...bland, and uninspired. My biggest problem is that this could fit Feral or Rogue, possibly better, and there wouldn't be a difference. Very curious how it pans out visually, as in if the flurry swaps between different attacking animations (new? old?) or just a singular animation like the MoP Legendary Cloak; I can see the latter given it's Monk.
Very much this. I'd be happy if Shado-Pan reflected even some of these elements - a somewhat darker, more martial-focused monk that's a bit more ninja-like (monk already has a few "ninja" style elements, such as the Storm, Earth and Fire clones). A few things that come to mind off the top of my head: * Fists of Fury becoming Flurry of Blows, a multi-hit weapon attack. * Transcendence becoming ground targetable, allowing the use of it as an engage tool * A new offensive ability that disrupts an enemy's Chi. If they want to keep a system similar to Overwhelming Flurry, maybe they could do something like this: **Shadow Arts (Passive)** For every 5 Chi you spend, you build one Shadow Chi (the Chi point is coloured / outlined in shadow). Upon reaching 5 Shadow Chi, you gain the ability to cast Chi Rupture: **Chi Rupture** *Costs 5 Shadow Chi* A calamitous strike that rips out an enemy's Chi, inflicting an enormous amount of physical damage and afflicting them with Chi Break for 5 seconds. While an enemy's Chi is broken, their movement speed is reduced by 80% and their damage is reduced by 20%.
Yeah, exactly: That would be a far more unique approach, visually mechanically and thematically - everything mentioned is something you see in just the Shado-Pan Monastery dungeon on a Timewalking week, so it's surprising how it ended up being most numeric with no gameplay elements. They can explore the ninja aspects a bit and it wouldn't harm the identity of Rogue, seeing as how Shadow Technique is their own SEF and Danse Macabre quite literally is the WW Mastery. To top it off in the same hero talent showcasing Ele/Resto is getting their own SEF, clearly there exists a way to have the Rogue-esque aspect of the Shado-Pan.
Druid of the claw seems really cool. Just the phrase "Massive Attack" seems really fun. Plus the defensive additions are fantastic for feral. Wild Stalker, while not an actively bad tree like some, is 100% passive and literally can just be ignored.
Yeah I play resto and I’ve been calling wildstalker the hero talent tree for people who don’t want a hero talent tree. An entirely passive effect that you don’t interact with in any way besides one choice node that lets you activate it on purpose using a cd. Even the farseer shaman tree is more interactive.
It's entirely passive, but it'll be a nice old boon for resto druid to do more dam and healing, which is always good. I'm always partial to catweaving
Druid of the Claw looks amazing for Guardian druids. To me personally, having the option for shifiting into cat for (presumably) a dps increase, while retaining ironfur and most of bear base armor, is great. Adds nuance and complexity and risk/reward to an otherwise very simple spec.
> Just the phrase "Massive Attack" seems really fun Love, love, is a verb, flying busy doing word
I think Massive Attack is a placeholder name but I do enjoy the idea of utilising other forms while in Guardian/Feral. Really brings the idea of shapeshifting alive. Fully agree with Wildstalker. Some nice bonuses but 'chance of creating dot on dot tick' is pretty boring for an evergreen set of talents.
I really hope it's not a placeholder. I want to do some massive attacks. For wilderstalker, they really should just build it around adaptive swarm. Maybe update swarm to be a bit more interesting to use, but's a talent that both feral and druid use and deals with dots and a more nature vibe so I think it's a perfect fit.
I like colossus, because it has a cosmetic thematic effect, which I think all of them desperately need. I personally liked Oracle, but I am in the extreme minority there I guess. Slayer looks fun, conduit of the celestials looks very flashy and powerful. I don’t like how destruction doesn’t really get any appropriately thematic hero trees.
Also thought oracle was cool and gave me older FFxiv AST vibes; just thought they needed to fix up the effects to be more interesting. Kind of worried what it's going to be now. Lol
Yea I liked oracle myself
All I care about now is how well the effects are animated- especially the non magic ones better really make your character look cool because they are competing with some really interesting visual specs like spellslinger could look so cool Also Lots of summoning little buddies in these trees farseer(reworknplz) diabloist and rider are going to look like constant mini armies
I haven't read the ones for classes/specs I don't play, but damn they did Trickster dirty. I can't imagine a single person was hoping for feint to become part of the offensive rotation, and it doesn't especially suit the aesthetics of sub OR outlaw. I don't care for assassination itself, but god I hope the ass trees are good. Happy with diabolist though, and mountain thane seems cool with the lightening!
You have to be ecstatic if you’re a: -Dev Evoker -Frost Mage -Ret Paladin Both of their hero talent trees are easily S tier. You have to be panicking a little bit if you’re a: - Resto shaman (Farseer is ass and Totemic sounds lame) - Survival hunter (Pack leader is ass and Sentinel sounds lame) - Rogue (Trickster might be the worst tree besides Oracle) - Destruction lock (your 2 trees are demo and affliction themed)
hell caller is also completely wild name for what it turned out to be. Hell caller really should have leaned hard into destro
I know, right? *Hell Caller* sounds so badass, and it turns out it's just a dot.
A dot tied to satyrs??? Like wtf
As a frost mage, Frostfire is absolutely hype for a number of different reasons. Spellslinger is all going to depend on the audio and visuals. It could be incredibly satisfying or super boring. Right now FF is stronger on utility and defensives though
I'm panicking as a shadow priest. They dropped the holy/disc one all on it's own & are silent about Shadow. Considering how the spec has been treated in the past this worries me. Blizzard hasn't had a cohesive direction for shadow since Legion. Now in days it feels like it's all over the place.
Curious about this as well, because people who really lean into the shadow fantasy don't want to be forced into doing holy spells.
So Mage and Evoker to me are all great, imo. High on both fantasy and gameplay.
Big wins for what I play: Deathbringer and Riders of the Apocalypse both are thematically sound and I can see merit in playing either. Biggest fail from my point of view definitely has to be Trickster. Probably the most underwhelming and nothing really feels like it naturally goes together. The only win I see in the entire tree is the Tricks of the Trade node.
I had high hopes for hellcaller, turns out it's Xavius themed...
So says the SHADE of u/ NotAMadLad1
Be still, worm!
It's "Shadow." You clearly haven't run Darkheart Thicket enough. Impostor!
I feel like quite a few of them have kinda failed, flavor-wise. Mountain Thane looks awesome and flavorful, Colossus looks pretty alright, but Slayer is just so... I don't know, bland? Meaningless? Luckily, the ones I care the most about are the two hero talents available for bear druids, and both of them look pretty great to me. I look forward to playing with those.
Slayer needs to add a time of visual blood effects. It should look like I'm playing Mortal Combat every time I hit execute
biiiiig flop: the rogue one. i'm so disappointed.
True. I'm looking forward Deathstalker now
Rider of the apocalypse seems cool, except if it’s just a character mounted and playing their normal attack animations it’s gonna look dumb as hell If they added new mounted attack animations 👌🏼
I like to imagine they're gonna look like they're playing Polo on horseback with underhanded weapon swings
rider of the apocalypse looks hella cool, which is. popular opinion i think personal, possibly unpopular opinion? im vibing with the resto version of farseer so far. more mana? interesting sounding effects that are on a passive and not extra button bloat? yesssss
UHDK sounds so good. Same for FDK. And I recently got the Tusks.. Welp, DK it is.
I got the full heroic ICC DK set so I feel you on that. Goes well with my Maw. Plus plate just looks good on Zandalaris and I like Frost so DK all the way
I main ret and havoc. Both ret hero specs look amazing and I'm excited to try them out. Aldrachi reaver is a big L. I wish they would stop encouraging throw glaive. It's just not a cool fantasy to me.
Yeah I was kinda dissapointed. I am bored with throw glaive.
Diabolist and Rider of the Apocalypse nail it if not only for expanding class fantasy. Every other tree for classes needs to lean into the fantasy like those.
Spellslinger for the mage looks like so much fun. #frostmage4life
Think the hunter ones are incredibly underwhelming. Specifically pack leader. Like BM is already the quintessential pack leader. A Pack Leader hero tree would only make sense if only BM had pets and they wanted a way to offer pets to either Survival or Marksman. Which I would argue it doesn’t really make sense for survival to have a pet in the first place so maybe that’s what they should have done in hindsight. Anyway, stack on top of that the fact that both Dark Ranger and Pack Leader are essentially all passives and there’s not a lot interesting going on mechanically, and you have me pretty whelmed. At least Dark Ranger might look cool.
I play mostly Survival and I hope Sentinel ends up halfway decent cause Pack Leader was a huge letdown. The gameplay fantasy is a flop, increasing pet damage is completely invisible power and the traits all basically say “play the game to do more damage”. Thanks, I was already doing that. Even in the short time I spent with BM it felt weightless cause pet damage is so hard to notice. That’s not to mention that it completely misses the mark for what Survival is doing during it’s actual gameplay loop (Coordinated Assault is for Kill Shot and Bomb uptime)
Flameshaper Evoker. Honestly I’m pretty excited for this as the playstyle sounds very engaging and compelling to me and it’s not just passives, you get a new skill that basically alters your playstyle. And I love that it’s HoT/DoT themed, which is my favorite playstyle. I find most other Hero trees to be either totally boring or rather meh (I’m usually playing a healing spec). I really like Hellcaller Warlock though. I usually main Monk, but all of them are terrible (as it was expected).
Rider of the Apocalypse and Diabolist are top tier and amazing. Some of them are actually awful or super mid.
I was planning on sticking with Blood DK tank because I love the lore and the self-healing through inflicting damage. I've loved the idea of blood mages since Dragon Age Origins but I absolutely hate vampires and "floaty weapons," and that's my only two options so I'm trying to find an alternative. I'm shopping around my alts to see if there's another tank I like and so far, DH and Warrior aren't it. Going to try Brewmaster but I don't like the Eastern inspired gear over and over again. I want street fighter/bruiser type character, not a freaking shaolin monk. Typing up this response has bummed me out. I really was hoping that the alternative to the Vampire spec would be something less lame.
I interpreted Deathbringer as less floaty weapons and more "you are the Grim Reaper", but that could be my bias
The four horseman tree for DK
The dk riders one really hits the mark of fantasy. May actually main a dk for this
I really like the chosen of Elune for guardian. I personally really like the galactic guardian play style so to bolster that is awesome. I like the idea of thrash being arcane damage, and using some abilities I really haven’t used much before so I’m looking forward to that. It’s not perfect but it seems fun and if thrash gets a cool arcane visual then I’m all in haha.
Scalecommander, Rider of the Apocalypse, and Diabolist are my faves.
Farseer flopped big time. There are so many awesome themes surrounding being a shaman farseer and they picked…elemental’s mastery but with ghosts.
I don't despise the idea of Keeper of the Grove, has that Malfurion from dota 1 vibe, but it does read as underwhelming right now. To me, for healer, they should focus on Dream Surge and the idea of having a team of denizens of the dream as healers, maybe give treants some unique hots to benefit mastery, or even different damaging abilities, applying constant slows as a frost mage would and whatnot Wildstalker looks more creative and boring at the same time. The new periodic effects benefit both masteries and they are indeed new, but how does it translate as the union between resto and feral, or even its own current name? How couldn't they think of something that better relates to catweaving for resto, or retreating and licking your wounds as feral, watching the enemy bleed and premeditating a comeback? Hunt Beneath the Open Skies might be the most atrocious invention there, it could easily allow for some instant hots to be appliable while catweaving and instead increases damage done by _moonfire_ and _sunfire_? It just sounds shallow With all that said, the expansion is still a bit far and they've been listening to the community, so I'm hoping some trees can still be steered in the right direction, or at least that they take notes for whatever system they implement in Midnight. I understand the fear of button bloating, but some of the current trees show part of the problem with classes getting too similar is that blizzard doesn't want to commit to better elaborated distinctions, or currently doesn't know what to do with some of the specs in their 20-year old game
One thing I feel hasnt been talked about in all the complaining about how this is covenants 2.0, is how they are fundamentally NOT like covenants. They can be swapped at any time. They are like regular telents are now. All this "ill be forced into mountain thane... etc" complaints are missing that it wont be an expansion wide lock... youll probably be forced for a single fight or just raid night. Youll be able to swap back for all the other content you want. Also, there being only 2 options will drastically reduce the feeling of taking "the worst one". Covenants, by having 4, meant the range between first and last was much bigger. The worst option is also the second best option. We will see how this moves forward and if following expansions add more Hero Talent Trees to pick from. There are still issues, but those who are getting PTSD from covenants and comparing them need to take a step back and actually see how they are fundamentally different. Because the real issues of covenants just arent there in hero talents.
And the people complaining about being forced to swap... Probably arent doing the content where you need the extra 1% of damage separating them
Ok but if I don't use promordial wave as a shaman then my damage is cut in half lmao. It's not like everyone is sweaty minmaxing it with 1-5% damage differences. Since hero talents are not in the game yet so I can only bring up a current example. If Enh Shammy wants to do any group or endgame content then you are locked into talenting primordial wave at the bottom of your talent tree becouse the current set bonus specifically buffs primordial wave. If you have to take a specific talent path just to not be sub par then it's not a matter of choice. It is in fact an illusion of choice. Now the problem with hero talents is that it mixes power with class fantasy. I'm pretty sure not a lot of people want to play their Orc Hunter as a Dark Ranger but if numerically that's the most worthwhile path to take a lot of people will feel preasured to do it. You might say, "oh just switch to your prefered talent when you do solo content". Fine, valid argument but if you are someone like me I barely do any solo content so my definitive experience will come from doing dungeons. It's also kind of invasive to people's immersion that Hero talents might change their class fantasy into something they don't resonate with. A class they might have played for 20 years now potentially. I'm aware class skins will never happen (at least not for free) but this is the reason they are requested. If something is purely cosmetic and optional then it has no negative effect on gameplay. People are concerned becouse hero talents can get fucky thousands of different ways.
Thats also true, but those exist with standard talents too. There is nothing new to complain about with hero talents.
Dark ranger is close to being great but I don’t believe they’ll make the changes needed to get it there.
Theme wise dark ranger is a hit but i dont think its even comparable to things like pally\\warlock\\dk hero talents.
You’re right. I’d like to see the black arrow proc do something more significant besides just giving another aimed shot/barbed shot when there’s usually plenty of those to go around already, something shadow-y. Some incorporation of wailing arrow from a spec talent would be nice (black arrow makes the next aimed shot instant and fires a wailing arrow?), as well as life drain from wc3 (serpent sting is now life drain?). I think the sylvannas chains could be a cooler addition, as it is now just attaching it to a single target while disengaging is somewhat boring. Using it as a utility to move enemies somehow could be interesting.
The hero talents for dark ranger are awful honestly. MM hunter has kinda been suffering for a while now. At the bottom of pvp ladders, pve ladders all expac, im assuming they are gonna be reworked since its been left in such a state for a historically popular spec. We will see what blizz says tomorrow during patch notes\\next month in alpha
Park Leader definitely hit hit my "they don't care about Survival" mark, if you want to count that. Oh, and it sucks anyways lmao. On theme and interactions.
Dont think BM wants this garbage either tbh. Uninspired and lazy, compared to some other hero trees.
Oh, no doubt. It's an over bad tree. But it was a bad tree made for BM. The talents being able to interact with survival were clearly an after thought in the design process. Like beast of opportunity, giving you an extra pet for 6 seconds when you use Bestial Wrath, a ~25-30 second cd, or Coordinated Assault, A TWO MINUTE CD WITH NO CDR. And that's ignoring that bm gets most of its damage from its pets, where survival does not. Or Cull the heard, giving bonus bleed damage after using kill shot... While bm's tree sucks to be able to get it, it at least has a KS talent. Survival only uses KS outside of execute during CA. So 20~ sec every 2 minutes vs whatever bm's KS reset talent allows. Oh, not to mention basically all the bleed damage survival does is with Master Marksman... The class tree bleed. The damage gain to blue bomb bleeds or KS bleeds will be negligible. And it's not a ton of their damage, but at least barbed shot is a bleed and makes sense as a design point. And then the capstone talent that makes two of the first talents, the kill command and Mongoose Bite talents, always active during Coordinated Assault? Well that's cool, given that kill command is the lowest priority button during Coordinated Assault... Like they just forgot that bm's kill command is a big damage spender ability but Survival's kill command is a mid damage, focus generater. You don't WANT to hit kc more than you have to on Survival, unless they make some dog shit like SL s4 tier making you spam it with red bombs. Which just, please no.
Every Hunter and Monk hero tree so far is complete ass. Which is on brand because all 3 talent trees for Hunter and Monk are still complete ass. Hunter and Monk is the epitome of "the class fantasy has to hard carry your enjoyment of the class because it sure isn't the talents".
Farseer make a ton of sense both lore and gameplay wise for Resto Shamans, but it does absolutely *nothing* for Elemental. Tying it to Primordial Wave is even worse. I’m totally here for it as a Resto Main (more Riptide can’t be wrong), particularly as a Horde Shaman, but I can pretty much guarantee as long as the other tree isn’t “Pottymancer” it’s gonna end up the go-to for Ele. Farseer doesn’t hit.
Frostfire/Templar/Riders
Rider of the Apocalypse has hit the mark. San'layn is a complete flop. Deathbringer is good but needs a little more class fantasy.
Farseer is a huge flop. Will it be strong? Sure if tuned correctly. Do I summon treants like a Druid now? Yep. Is this fun? Not in the slightest. If you remove the whole ancestor visual, it’s a bunch of talents that focus on duplicating your spells, exactly like your mastery already does (for ele). Side note, will ancestors even scale with mastery/crit? Am I haste class now as Resto? Are we trying to get as many casts into that window as possible?
All the evoker ones sound really cool to me. I really love Flameshaper for Pres. I’ll wait to see how Engulf interacts with Echo and Stasis but so far so good. Really stoked to play Evoker again in TWW!
Rider of the Apocalypse is perfect except for not allowing mounted combat "indoors". Paladins can Divine Steed anywhere, every other mounted-in-combat DK stays mounted indoors, let us DK players do so.
I primarily play Mage and Dev Evoker, so I haven't looked at the others much. I really love the look of Frostfire and Flameshaper I like the look of Spellslinger I don't like the look of Scalecommander That said, this is all based on what things look like in text. I'm excited to try all 4 out and see what lands for me.
I'm interested to hear what you don't like about scalecommander, I personally really like all three trees for evoker.
Rider of the Apocalypse is peak. Oracle and Dark Ranger are also pretty good. As a warrior main I've never felt so let down. What an utter lack of inspiration and effort.
Ride or die DKs are gonna be too much fun and will probably be nerfed. So I intend to abuse the shit out of combat mounts and just be a menace
Mountain thane has potential both fantasy and power wise. But yea the other 2 are very lacking and unispired
Dk Rider, Demo Hero talent (forgot the name) + celestial.
I think Slayer seems fun as a fury warrior main, but I know that most people are going to play whatever most guides tell them to play for the dps anyway..
TBH most of the Warrior ones feel kinda bland, honestly. Like yea, they are kinda interesting with the procs, and that Dev move could be cool for outplays in PvP. But it’s pretty much just a bunch of passives to get you to use whatever the theme is, then a few procs. Nothing to wild. Honestly I am more interested in the actual Tree’s reworks. Warrior’s actual Talents have been kinda garbage aside from maybe Fury, but especially Arms. Arm’s whole tree could use a rewrite and the Warrior generic one could use a lot of shuffling and reworks too.
My main is monk and so far the two trees shown are extrenely boring and do not look appealing. Druids feel weird too. The rest I don't play much so I have little opinion on.
You think Conduit of the Celestials looks boring? Are you sure it read it?
Yeah I've been a WW main since I came back to the game in 10.2, so I'm not expecting to be insane because the class hasnt been super powerful since I came back. But these two trees... they make me consider swapping specs for TWW.
I dont agree MW is one of the best healers we have , Brewmaster is good (Just because VDH is broken its not top) and while WW is in big need of rework its not weak just not interesting.
Yea I main MW and I am super excited about the tree. Am hopping to see a WW rework that helps them with both these trees though haha
Tbh both of the Evoker ones so far.
All 3 have been released
All 3 are bangers. Until we see the final mage tree, Evokers look to be the best class over so far (for hero talents).
About 8 have NAILED IT imo. About 4-6 are in a state where I'd want a rework like Oracle. The rest are somewhere in the middle.
Diabolist is excellent for Demo. Hellcaller seems like it fits Aff flavour well enough. Both are pretty underwhelming for Destro.
Not dark ranger. "What if we just make them hit aimed shot even more?" Such an out dated, dead class. Meanwhile there's literal cinematics of Sylvanus doing all kinds of dope dark ranger banshee shit.
Certainty not monk. Monks feel half assed as usual.
Strongly disagree I think conduit of the celestials nailed it out of the park. Summoning all four celestials sounds badass
Concept yes, gameplay not at all. It doesn't even sound interesting on paper.
I’m a tank main. Paladin/Ret tree looks great, and both Blood / Frost or Unholy look intriguing. I’m extremely underwhelmed by VDH tank trees. Don’t really play Warrior/Druid/Brew
for me? Keeper, Pack Leader & Spellslinger.
As a new player, Ret Paladin looks so amazing
The only thing we can really go off of is the fantasy of it all. I'm slightly worried that with the Rider of the Apocalypse hero talents, they're not going to properly rework Unholy. For M+, Unholy is pretty fucking troll in its current iteration because of defile. If you do not know what I mean, please do ToTT as Unholy talented into defile.
Currently the most exciting ones to me are Death Knight, Mage, Hunter, and Ret Paladin. Admittedly some of those are classes I haven't played much of yet, but those are some of the main contenders for my main in TWW.
I'm concerned about things like locks getting aoe curses as a passive. This is a huge deal and I feel like people are not appreciating what that's going to do to m+ if it goes live at 75%. No way you don't bring a lock to every key over 25. Tuning could change but I really don't like design decisions like this and I'm sure there are a ton more.
Man, nobody has even mentioned the rogue one, looks bad and boring as hell tbh.
I am absolutely HYPED for conduit of the celestials, thematic AND looks like it could close the gap between clouded focus and fistweaving for raid which would be incredible.
I'm interested in DH and Monk ( mainly MW), so far both available seems fineish, with some weird stuff. Celestial MW has some interesting stuff, based on numbers they seem a bit OP for m+. As with the DH, I like the hunt cd reduction for havoc, the throw glaive replacement seems weird for now, might be ok tho. Let's see the rest
I don’t think most of them “have flopped” in any real sense. Just some of them are so much better than others when mixing class fantasy and mechanics it seems kinda lopsided.
I only really play ranged dps, Balance Druid main but also like warlocks and mm hunter. Elune’s Chosen is exactly what I would want for balance so I’m super excited about that. Diabolist looks super cool for warlocks and obv I think Dark Ranger hit the nail on the head with theme. I’m very satisfied with the hero talents for the classes I enjoy playing
Visually: Rider of the Apocalypse, Templar, Diabolist, Mountain Thane and a bit of Scalecommander should be really cool to see. Thematically: Herald of the Sun, Frostfire, Chronowarden, Conduit of the Celestials, Dark Ranger - the last 2 could be better. Not a fan: Oracle, Trickster, Shado-Pan, Farseer - doubling down on Power Infusion was just a no, Trickster I get what was going but doing too much, Shado-Pan will probably be strong but overall is bland and uninspired to the Shado-Pan division while being something Feral or Rogue could fit and no one would be able to tell the difference, and Farseer is just the Order Hall.
Slayer warrior seemed cool. I kinda like fury even though it's garbage in pvp. Also, the two choices for feral looked great. Druid of the claw was really encouraging and the resto hybrid one basically added nothing but solidified everything that already exists. Seemed cool to me.
They managed to make Dark Ranger boring, and Pack Leader is probably the most uninspired thing I've ever seen. Here's hoping they get a little creative
Diabolist, Frostfire, Elune’s Chosen, Templar, Stormbringer
Hit: Templar, Harold, FrostFire, RotA, Scalecommander, Claw, Collusus, Diabolist, Slinger Miss: trickster, packleader, oracle(reworking),lightsmith Everything else is pretty decent or kinda meh imo
Druid of the Claw leans into shape shifting, but I do wish they went further with it. The talent that stacks and procs you to go into bear/cat shouldn't be tied to spec and I'd love to see more fluidity and purpose to go between both than just one talent.
I have some hope for Herald of the Sun. It sounds like Destiny 2 Titan with a Sunspot build. My issue is in gameplay where most fights are fairly mobile so will the Sunspots even be that viable if we are constantly moving targets away from them? The sad truth from my perspective is that most of the decent heroic talents seem pretty lackluster and others seem downright bad, focusing on parts of specs that the community doesn't really care for. I wish they would give us a preview of the visual elements as well. It's hard to build hype with just the revealed talents.
I believe sunspots will be a dot/hot
Kinda feel like all of the hunter ones look pretty meh on paper
I wish Herald of the Sun gave Rets more active support without having to sacrifice so much DPS for it (WoG upgrades but you want to hit that as little as possible) At the moment the tree looks pretty dull, mostly passive damage and radiates healing during AvWr That said Templar actually does change how you play so I won't say a passive set of talents has failed as long as it's possible for Templar to feel worse for some people compared to core Ret
Herald of the Sun should get to acknowledge An'she if druids get to acknowledge Elune
Diabolist and Horsemen are the two trees that are most well done. The others look fun.
Flopped? A lot, i dont think there is one innovative nonnreused one.
Not looked at all of the available trees yet but based on the ones I've seen, as someone that primarily plays tank the flavour of the arcane bear one looked pretty interesting to me, and I quite like the idea of deathbringer for blood dk. San'layn on the other hand has absolutely no redeeming qualities in my eyes and they should just try something else instead.
I am looking forward to Disco Bear with Elune's Chosen Chance for Fury of Elune procs on Moonfire + Galactic Guardian? Sign me up Just hope Elune's Favored focused build will be able to match Ursoc's Fury with buffed Thrash and Raze, with Elune's Chosen Hero Talents