I dont understand the new talent trees.

Q u o t e:
They are trying to do away with cookie cutter builds right?

And in order to do that, they are decreasing the amount of talents and talent points?

How the hell does that solve anything, that makes cookie cutters WORSE.

We'll have some screenshots of what this looks like for you later, but I have a feeling you'll get a better understanding of it when you've seen those or experienced them in the beta. We've essentially trimmed out the talents that people felt they had to take (the fat so to speak) and left the ones that were generally worthwhile to take that they would have taken anyway. These cut talents are either gone or appear in different ways. This still leaves the door open for "customization" in more interesting ways via the core talent spec you choose to take, mastery, spells/abilities that are made available and more. It's actually more flexible than it seems at first blush.

We'll obviously be looking for some great constructive feedback on all of these as we progress through the beta.

Q u o t e:


Now instead of having useful +dmg talents to get down a tree, I have to take blastwave and dragons breath, nice.

Perhaps you'll change your mind when you look at the actual available spells and abilities versus what you think is missing. This should be showing up in the beta in the not too distant future so we should be able to get a more accurate view of player input then.

Q u o t e:
I'm guessing....

Dumbing down the game more to...

1. make it easier for glasslickers to figure out a spec
2. make it easier for blizz to manage & balance classes
3. kill niche specs like holy tankadins

This brings up something interesting that perhaps should be brought up in respect to the "lifetime" of World of Warcraft. Remember, it's over five years old now. We want to keep moving forward with development and there has to be somewhere to go. So we're taking a look at what can we do better than the original release and how can we make sure that, as we progress further into the lifetime of the game, it has somewhere to go. So it's more about #2 than anything else. We're not working to dumb down anything so much as find ways to create the room for growth in smart ways.

Q u o t e:
Do you mean to say when you stated " We've essentially trimmed out the talents that people felt they had to take" (as an example) I have to use these 5 points in this area i don't want to use them in but i have to to advance on to the next talent tier or are you taking out my 5% increased damage talent. If you are taken out increased % to crit or damage talents across the board will it be made up or added to another talent as a two for one deal or just removed from the game all together?

Pretty much this. There were talents people would take that might give a little extra dps here or there, or a little extra healing. These were felt to be "musts" but not everyone felt great about having to take them and use points for them. So in some cases, these are being sort of "built in" to other abilities and spells or worked in somewhere else (if we feel it's worth keeping.)

Q u o t e:


I'm pretty sure they will keep some of the fat, it still adds to the flavor. But lets be honest, do you think Molten Shields, Incineration, World In Flames or Imp. Fire Blast are talents worth keeping?

We definitely want to keep things interesting. We just want to make sure that they ARE interesting enough to keep or offer enough of a difference to be interesting still going forward.