#0 - June 13, 2010, 4:12 p.m.
The new talent system, however, absolutely restricts any freedom of choice, as it becomes mandatory to put at least 51 points into one tree to obtain the passive bonus. Everyone will be 51/xx/xx, xx/51/xx, xx/xx/51, or close to it. Builds such as Mutilate/Prep will become uncompetitive.
With the advent of rated BGs, having variety of builds to suit different situations is more important than ever before, so it does not make sense to not get bonuses from other trees even if the player invest into them.
If a player invest into Prot as Ret, it is because the player like their character to be more sturdy. Similarly, if the player invest into Holy as Ret, it is likely because the player likes to throw some heals around in BGs. So, why not give the player bonus to damage reduction or bonus to healing if they have invested points into other tree?
Instead of resolving mandatory talents of passive bonuses, the problem now lies in mandatory tree investments. Any innovative builds will never occur again, everyone will always be 51/xx/xx.
What needs to happen is that players always receive tree bonuses for points they spend. To curb players from heavily investing into one tree, the numeric trend of the bonuses need to be in a form of a bell curve.
In other words, the player will always get bonus for investing into any tree (does not have to be the primary tree), but there is a ramp up to gain the optimum tree bonus. Likewise, when the player invest too heavily into a tree, diminishing returns start to occur.
