Dummied down talent tree ?

I'm not convinced these posts aren't exaggerations popping out in the wake of major change. I've tried choosing specializations for several different classes and had tough, but fun choices to make in every case. There are at least a few talents in each tree which will provide extra flavor or utility according to your play style.

Will people determine the best min/max builds and spread them to the masses? Sure. That happened before patch 4.0.1 anyway. Prior to 4.0.1 you sure did have more talents and more points to spend, but the illusion of choice isn't the same thing as true choice. So many of the choices you had were between rather boring passive talents, and the choice was usually very clear. You usually chose the obvious power-increasing talents to improve your performance. Now your choices are a little more flavorful, and the best route to take is a little more subjective. You also have a greater choice of utility and power in your glyphs, and on your gear via Reforging.

Try taking another look at your old talent trees and let me know if there were truly a lot of very compelling talents that made choosing really hard, or if there were just a bunch more branches to throw points in. Look at the trees today and let me know if there are truly no choices for you to make that might enhance the enjoyment of playing your class.

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Lets just hope all the reporters at Blizzcon aren't groupies. Then we'll know if its exaggeration or not. There's a lot of broken stuff in this patch, and I don't know how it got released. Only a groupie reporter could ignore that.

I don't know about reporters, but the Systems Panel this year will have a good chunk of time set aside for Q&A from the audience.

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This

You guys don't get it.

The choice you had before wasn't on which talents to pick. It was between the right spec and the dead wrong spec. Makes no sense to put talents in a tree that will intentionally make your player worse for choosing them.

Your choice before was to either go cookie cutter or not do any progression. Most cool talents came at the expense of effectiveness which is also dumb.

Right now on all of my characters, I feel like I can make a few choices and either way I'm still good. Include glyphs that can be quickly and easily swapped from boss fight to boss fight for some different looks at different strategies and I think we have more than before.

It isn't like its a ton more but at least when I make a choice now its for my own personal flavour and not a choice of "right and wrong" because a choice like that isn't really a choice at all.

This is a pretty straight-forward explanation of our basic goals for changing the way players choose their tool kits.

Some of you are claiming that the choice is gone because you can't really go wrong anymore. Even if that's partially true, the whole idea is you're choosing what types of utilities you want, rather than between wasted talents and mandatory ones. This is what I was referring to when I said the previous system only gave the illusion of more choice. We think it's more fun to give you interesting choices, make you think how more flavorful talents might change up the way you play a bit, and generally making the focus of a good player on the way one uses all of the tools one has at their disposal.

You don't need to be told every single talent you should take, every piece of gear you should have, all of the gems you need, and what glyphs are necessary to be a good player. Now you have in these areas more subjective choices that allow you to be a little creative without necessarily suffering viability.

With all of that said, we recognize we're not completely there yet. We've been developing and testing these changes for months now, and we'll continue to fine-tune things as more players grow accustomed to the new system. We're still listening to your feedback and will be watching the meta game very closely, particularly as players race toward 85.

We do want to make sure though that you recognize the old system is not coming back like it was before. We've committed to these systems changes, feel they're better for the game, and will continue improving them. Most of the concerns in this thread are expressed in a very civil manner. I really appreciate that. :)