Talent Stone
Binds when picked up
Unique
10 sec cast 15 min cooldown
Use: Returns you'r talents as they use to be.
Speak to a stonecarver in a capitol city to change your
stone carved talents.
Item Level 60
Put hig cost to Talent Stone and it's fine system.
It is, for me, actually. The trivialization of talent specs is, quite frankly, my number one pet peeve about the game. I despise it. Yes, we can teleport, we can die and resurrect. Consistency within the rules of the world. Talents present an interesting, useful method of defining and differentiating characters that fits the world and adds verisimilitude, helping to build a convincing environment, and respecs are basically vandalism on the scenery of that environment.
Now of course, playability must take precedent. That's why I call respecs a necessary evil. But the more that can be done to make them less necessary and more rare, the better the game becomes.
So instead of having your good healing druid respec to tank when you need that extra tank for a single encounter, you have to recruit another tank into the guild? I mean, talk to people that were around working on 4h in naxx, and have them tell you how much fun it was to recruit 8 prot warriors for a single fight.
Having people able to respec at a resonable cost is a good thing - it means your guild can do something when druid x decides to take a three week vacation to germany, or warrior y has to take care of his ailing grandmother for a week. Sure, for DPS classes it matters less and means more - but limiting yourself away from more tanks and healers seems to punish those playing the game for no good reason. Having two set "specs" with a higher respec cost to change either of them is a reasonable compromise - it then provides a way to identify your character in two aspects (say, pve and pvp) without a now trivial moneysink.
It could also be a good timesaver as well, less waiting 20 minutes for the dps warrior to respec, etc. For some classes, limiting it to two specs still provides a significant set of choices as well - I regularly spec three different ways on my druid (feral tank, resto pvp, resto pve) due to the needs of the guild and sunwell as a whole. If it is nontrivial (250-1k gold) to change one of my two specs in the expansion, I will be far more resistant to switching them out, but still can for things like I mentioned above since the other players in the guild would probably assist me in the cost.
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but has this thread just turned into some sort of an anti-respec rally? If so, can someone explain why their immersive experience should take precedence over someone else's ability to play through most of the content without rerolling?
...
Obviously, this little rant is colored by the current state of affairs as it is now in TBC. Perhaps the new skills in Wrath will make Protection soloing at least slightly bearable.
All the advocacy of difficult respeccing in this thread has been carefully and explicitly contingent upon Blizzard making exactly such changes. Nobody's saying, "Make respecs cost a thousand gold with a 30-day cooldown and let the healers and tanks suffer, muahaahahaa!" We're saying, "Fix the problems that drive people to respec." Blizzard is unquestionably working on this; they've said so flat-out in Q&A this weekend. "Then," we say, "couple those changes with increased respec difficulty."
That clarification of the complete idea, which people somehow keep interpreting as "let them eat cake," will be my last word on the subject. To a large degree, this is a pure matter of opinion, and either you're Dudley Do-Right or you're Snidely Whiplash, without any real possibility of consensus.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
If we stop using logic and instead sees what this means for the game. Imagine if there were no way you could respec your character at all, then wow would have almost an unlimited amount of ways to customize your character. The old setup with a restrictive respec makes you still able to change if you screw up but you would not be able to respec for every ocasion. The new much lighter respec makes people respec daily to fit their needs and almost the only difference between two chars is their gear.
...
Atleast I hope for a lot higher respec cost caps in the next expansion, up to roughly 250-500g.(Remember that you will earn a ton more gold at lvl 80 than 70 just like 70 earns a ton more gold than 60) They could even make the cap scale with your level so that the level 60 don't get screwed by the change.
...
It amuses me that mostly DPS characters support this viewpoint.
I play a lot of hybrid classes, and it's essential, in a raid environment, that hybrids be able to respec to fit the current raid's needs. It prevents over-recruitment; if you didn't have that holy pally respec to Prot to aoe tank Hyjal trash waves, you'd have to recruit another Prot paladin, and that leads to people whining because they're only invited to raids for gimmick fights.
TBH, I don't care if Blizzard increases the cost of respecs. I have multiple 70s, one for tanking, one for healing, one for DPS, one for DPS/CC, etc. I'll probably end up leveling multiple 80s in WotLK to fill different roles. But of course, I don't care whether there's a tank for random pug #8000. If respec costs are prohibitively huge, my warrior will be specced Arms, will be PvPing as Arms, LFGing as Arms DPS, and if people whine that I'm not Protection spec, well, screw them, cause I'm not about to dump a hour's worth of farming into respec costs, in addition to keeping a separate Protection gear set fully enchanted, gemmed, inscripted, etc. I have better things to do with my time.
But of course, Blizzard has to care. They need a supply of tanks and healers to drag random puggies through instances, or people will /gamequit.
More than likely, we'll end up seeing some sort of talent stable system added for a minimal or nonexistent cost.
WoW will always be a game before it's an RPG. Blizzard will always break immersion if it means a more fun game
And they should be very wary about that, because immersion IS also fun, particularly for a RPG.
Having a believable and coherent world (nor necessarily "realist" of course, if only because of fantasy element in it, but at least having consistency within itself) helps a lot feeling "dragged in" the game. Damaging immersion is a dangerous thing to do, and they should be careful about it.
If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !
So did they announce what beta the people who attended the WWI will be able to test? Im guessing diablo 3, but I'm holding out hope for WOTLK as Diablo 3 has no appeal to me.
That talent stone looks as if you simply set a specific default talent tree that you can always revert back to every 15 minutes.
That saves people at most the 50g that it costs to go back to their original spec. And more than likely, Blizzard will probably raise the cap on respecs to 100g or higher. Was hoping that we could set two talent trees that we can jump back and forth between for free (a PvE and PvP spec, or tanking/farming spec).
That talent stone looks as if you simply set a specific default talent tree that you can always revert back to every 15 minutes.
That saves people at most the 50g that it costs to go back to their original spec. And more than likely, Blizzard will probably raise the cap on respecs to 100g or higher. Was hoping that we could set two talent trees that we can jump back and forth between for free (a PvE and PvP spec, or tanking/farming spec).
The Talent Stone above was a suggestion by Pitbuller, not the actual implementation. Blizzard hasn't decided yet how to handle the system.
buff /bÊŒf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but has this thread just turned into some sort of an anti-respec rally? If so, can someone explain why their immersive experience should take precedence over someone else's ability to play through most of the content without rerolling?
If you're seriously advocating this kind of platform, don't be surprised if every single Protection spec tank rerolls the FotM DPS class and never looks back. Why waste time leveling, questing, and gearing up a meat shield with all the offensive power of a wet noodle under an oppressive respec requirement? So you can go to bad PuG dungeons and get beaten to death because your DPS and healers suck? So you can go to max level raids and get beaten to death because DPS and healers are learning the encounter? So you can go sit in BGs and Arenas like the useless sack of hit points you are and contribute little to nothing of value? So you can struggle to complete anything other than gathering and FedEx quests because you lack the kind of damage output the content was tuned for?
Obviously, this little rant is colored by the current state of affairs as it is now in TBC. Perhaps the new skills in Wrath will make Protection soloing at least slightly bearable. But Blizzard has historically been notoriously slow when it comes to addressing small quality-of-life issues affecting a small subset of class specs, so you'll forgive me if I'd prefer to keep highly-accessible respecs in the name of playability over immersion.
Unless you're referring to a Protection-spec Warrior alt you may have, I have to disagree with you. I don't have any issues whatsoever soloing with my Prot Pally. Can my Hunter kill individual mobs faster? Yes, obviously. Does my Prot Pally kill huge masses of mobs faster? Yes, absolutely. Does my Prot Pally kill single mobs fast enough that I don't get bored and decide to do something else?
Yes, certainly. Though I guess that's up to individual taste. Personally I dislike people who feel they need to respec constantly for no other reason…Â*if you don't enjoy the playstyle, you shouldn't have spec'd Prot in the first place. Now…Â*a special exemption needs to be made: if you actively enjoy multiple playstyles and that's why you respec constantly, that's different. Then you probably should have rolled a Druid.
Now I just wish they do something with guild tabards by making them give some small bonus to a raid group if everyone in the raid is wearing it.
I think this is at odds with Blizzard's goals -- do you really think it's right to give a raid consisting entirely of the members of one single guild an edge over a raid with members from several guilds, and a few unguilded people? They're trying to make things more accessible, and that change would make them less accessible, especially if they started tuning around it.
It is, for me, actually. The trivialization of talent specs is, quite frankly, my number one pet peeve about the game. I despise it. Yes, we can teleport, we can die and resurrect. Consistency within the rules of the world. Talents present an interesting, useful method of defining and differentiating characters that fits the world and adds verisimilitude, helping to build a convincing environment, and respecs are basically vandalism on the scenery of that environment.
Now of course, playability must take precedent. That's why I call respecs a necessary evil. But the more that can be done to make them less necessary and more rare, the better the game becomes.
You realize the current raiding game would be nearly unplayable with this situation, right? You are basically asking raiding guilds to carry a roster of 40 people just to be able to do 25 man content, and not even because of attendance issues - that's just purely to fill the different roles you need on different fights. And to me the worst change they could possibly make would be to nerf content to the point where you don't have to care if all your mages are fire, all your hunters are BM, and so forth - if anyone can beat the content even using suboptimal specs, there is no challenge and the game becomes trivial. Choosing between good and bad specs is one of the hallmarks of excellent players in this game - that is the differentiation you get from the masses, not being some guy who refuses to stop being a ret paladin even when he is doing 600dps because it is "in character."
Originally Posted by Akka
And they should be very wary about that, because immersion IS also fun, particularly for a RPG.
Having a believable and coherent world (nor necessarily "realist" of course, if only because of fantasy element in it, but at least having consistency within itself) helps a lot feeling "dragged in" the game. Damaging immersion is a dangerous thing to do, and they should be careful about it.
This is true for single-player games, but I'd wager most players in WoW or competitive online games in general don't really care about immersion - they care about gameplay. That is especially true of people who read this forum.
Considering the information that was presented I am genuinely confused why you guys are going on about talent specs, which is likely one of the lowest impact changes that they have announced.
Like many other guilds, we had started to assume that we would probably be adding a second enhancement shaman due to the addition of death knights and some of the new Prot Warrior scaling. Raid-wide totems and unleashed rage kill that idea pretty quickly though. So hopefully Shaman bloat will be less of an issue.
I am very pleased that the new changes seem to have more or less solved 2 of the biggest problems of raid makeup which I see as...
1- Tank groups are a mess. Too many players put in the group to buff the tanks miss out on buffs that they care about.
2- Hunter groups often have 1-2 members that do not fit right. Resto Shaman gets nothing from this group. Ferals help the hunters but a feral would rather be with the enhance shaman etc.
With the new changes, the group compositions will be much more flexible and there seem like there will be fewer sacrifices made while maximizing group potential. Tactically I think this simplifies the game,which one could argue is a bad thing. I am certain though that a well constructed raid will still do considerably more dps than a randomly assigned one.
This respec topic is motivated by the division of PvE and PvP, which is a topic that a lot of people seem to be ignoring here. It's not a simple issue of healers and tanks not farming well; that's a more manageable problem (not that Blizzard has solved it, noting that they still suffer from longtime issues like spell pushback or horrendous mana efficiency).
It's really not plausible to expect that Blizzard will create talent trees that serve all purposes, all the time, with some kind of 71/0/0 solution that works acceptably in all environments, and all the untaken talents just being filler that nobody in their right mind would *ever* take (which is the implication of this "universal" talent build that people keep suggesting). I think it's safe to assume that this is *not* how Blizzard wants the talent trees to work. And it's complicated somewhat further by the fact that single-role classes still have three talent trees to fill.
Without making these trees extremely predictable, then you're just not going to be arrive at a talent tree that functions optimally at PvE and PvP. Today's rather competitive Arena environment also demands, amongst other things, an optimal talent configuration (battlegrounds and even world PvP demand it also, if you expect to derive any enjoyment at all out of them). So it follows pretty logically that if Blizzard doesn't want players to feel locked out of either PvE or PvP, then they need to provide *at least* the capability to switch between *two* specs. It's the reality of the way things are right now, and it overrides ethereal, high-minded concepts of player immersion.
And you could very easily make the argument for additional "stable spots". PvP-oriented specs tend to suffer heavily in PvP, so an additional spot could be used as an "alternate PvE role" spot.
Heck, at some point it might turn into a "bank spot" sort of deal, where you buy additional spots with some reasonably cost point, representing sort of a learned "state of mind" that you switch to through "meditation" or some such.
And note that, for players with large bundles of money, the current system is extremely permissive, such that it really negates any of the "immersion" arguments. If anything, the current system just unnecessarily penalizing to poorer players, who arguably could benefit from it the most (to casually participate in both PvP and PvE).
Yes, certainly. Though I guess that's up to individual taste. Personally I dislike people who feel they need to respec constantly for no other reason…�*if you don't enjoy the playstyle, you shouldn't have spec'd Prot in the first place. Now…�*a special exemption needs to be made: if you actively enjoy multiple playstyles and that's why you respec constantly, that's different. Then you probably should have rolled a Druid.
I felt compelled to point out how ridiculous this is.
"Playstyle" is not the concrete thing that you make it out to be, in a game like WoW that has many, many different aspects that play into one's overall game experience. A player may greatly enjoy how class plays in a 5-man instance, but hate how they work in a solo environment. In fact, they may enjoy a role in a 5-man group, but hate how that same role in a 25-man environment (healing, for example, changes drastically in strategy, and tanking to perhaps a lesser extent). And tanking is a role that doesn't even exist in PvP, as one extreme example of *many* of deep differences in "playstyle" between PvE and PvP.
So ultimately, for every player, "playstyle preference" becomes a fairly complex calculus of "average" enjoyment level of respective areas of the game, where greatly enjoying the mechanics of a preferred aspect of the game may overwhelm horrendous performance of an unimportant area of the game, or contrarily for another type of player, being "pretty fun" in two or three aspects of the game may override not being tremendously fun or powerful in any single one of them.
In pre-TBC, the situation heavily favored players who enjoyed raiding, and as we've seen, this isn't really how the developers (or many players) want the game work. The calculus I described will always exist, but they've been going down the road of making these choices less severe, and enabling players to participate in a few areas of the game at once. I think that's fine.
It always felt a bit wrong to me that you could have been one of the people that killed Lady Vashj, but the Cenarion Expedition would give more recognition to someone that handed in 10 [Unidentified Plant Parts]. Or that you achieve the final goal of the Shattered Sun Offensive (Preventing Kil'jaeden from entering the world), but the NPCs would much rather think of the guy that just did his dailies every day as being awesome.
The problem with this is that raiding rep would virtually trivialize getting it. The first faction I ever got exalted with was violet eye, and I'm still not exalted with a single Outland faction. Even if you get 1-2 rep for a mob, you're killing a LOT of mobs.
Personally in terms of rep I'd like there to be at least one repeatable way to gain rep to exalted per faction that doesn't require an instance run. I don't care how (it could be farm 10 shards from mobs ala consortium or kill 20 naga ala sporregar) or even if it would take a lot longer - let me solo my way to exalted.
I'm really confused how people can seriously have problems about "specs" somehow defnining your character. Are we even playing the same game?
Quite simply, no.
You are playing a game that involves min-maxing to increase performance as a core component. They are playing a game that involves deep immersion as a particular character with a particular identity as a core component.
Happens to all be going on with the same game engine in the same shared world, so it's easy to get confused, but Blizzard has always done this. They make games that can be played in very different ways by different populations. For example, while I absolutely loved StarCraft and WarCraft 3, and still pull them out from time to time, I understand that some people enjoy playing Blizzard's RTS games competitively against other human beings, which I've never been able to understand. Similarly, I understand some people played Diablo online with complete strangers, which I've also never been able to understand. There is simply no "right" way to play most of Blizzard's games, they're very deliberately crafted for a very broad audience.
I'll never understand how your paladin friend heading back to a capital city to change his talents from healing to tanking ruins your immersion, is it beyond mental capacity that some one in Azeroth could be specializing in more than one thing? On topic though, leaving respecs at just 50 gold would probably be a viable solution, its already fairly affordable to respec a lot, more so with a well used guild bank system. 50g at 80 will be pocket change i imagine though 2 inter-changeable specs on a cool down would be ideal. :<
Happens to all be going on with the same game engine in the same shared world, so it's easy to get confused, but Blizzard has always done this. They make games that can be played in very different ways by different populations. For example, while I absolutely loved StarCraft and WarCraft 3, and still pull them out from time to time, I understand that some people enjoy playing Blizzard's RTS games competitively against other human beings, which I've never been able to understand. Similarly, I understand some people played Diablo online with complete strangers, which I've also never been able to understand. There is simply no "right" way to play most of Blizzard's games, they're very deliberately crafted for a very broad audience.
A fair point - my favorite part about Starcraft was the campaign and the story, whereas to many players, they instantly open the game and hop on battlenet to play against other people. I guess personally I just have a hard time with immersion and role-playing in an MMO world where things are always going to be changed for the sake of gameplay over lore. Talent specs are just one example of this.
From a gameplay perspective, there is very little point in having to make choices in building a talent if whenever you need a talent you can take it. There's no point in making yourself weak at healing in order to tank if you can take back those weaknesses when you actually heal. There's no point in giving up mana efficiency for burst damage if you can take back that efficiency when you need the endurance. There isn't even really a point in gimping your DD for malediction if you can take that DD back when it becomes more rDPS to do so, it's just a mild math excercise to find the inflection point but it's not really playing the weakness that you're supposed to be accepting for your power if you never have that weakness when it matters. If you're not accepting some impactful form of weakness there's no functional point in having the power pretend to be a choice.
I think there are two ideal solutions to the problem. One is that having a max-level main makes it significantly easier to roll an alt, like starting at a higher level and sharing reputation to some extent. Characters are relatively permanent, but players who want to explore other aspects of the game have a much easier time doing so. The other is that the trees are thinned out so that a min-maxed 51-point spec only includes 30-40 optimization-based points, and the filler talents are mostly utility that can bring someone up to 95% offspec performance.
Amera: [edit: this is responding to a further-back post, not the one above mine] The game you're playing is the current one, and the current one only. The game Lhivera and I, and a few others, are talking about is what WoW could be, in more general terms. As far as fights, I would prefer more performance-based and less class/spec/role-based hard tests, like soft erages instead of hard enrages so an extra healer or three for some DPS classes is completely viable.
From a gameplay perspective, there is very little point in having to make choices in building a talent if whenever you need a talent you can take it. There's no point in making yourself weak at healing in order to tank if you can take back those weaknesses when you actually heal. There's no point in giving up mana efficiency for burst damage if you can take back that efficiency when you need the endurance. There isn't even really a point in gimping your DD for malediction if you can take that DD back when it becomes more rDPS to do so, it's just a mild math excercise to find the inflection point but it's not really playing the weakness that you're supposed to be accepting for your power if you never have that weakness when it matters. If you're not accepting some impactful form of weakness there's no functional point in having the power pretend to be a choice.
That's completely wrong. Talents are a limitation to how much power a character can bring with them at any given time. The "weakness" of a talent spec is the many other talents you *can't* take. Even if you could rearrange your talent points anytime you're out of combat, a raid still only has a set amount of power available to them, thus preventing a resto+elemental shaman from being ideal at both roles simultaneously. The nature of this limitation is completely independent of ease of respeccing.
I think there are two ideal solutions to the problem. One is that having a max-level main makes it significantly easier to roll an alt, like starting at a higher level and sharing reputation to some extent. Characters are relatively permanent, but players who want to explore other aspects of the game have a much easier time doing so. The other is that the trees are thinned out so that a min-maxed 51-point spec only includes 30-40 optimization-based points, and the filler talents are mostly utility that can bring someone up to 95% offspec performance.
So your proposal is that, if you want to play a warrior occasionally as Protection and occasionally as Arms and occasionally as Fury (all legitimate aspects of the warrior class archetype), then you should be given incentive to create three separate characters?
I've spoken with people who were seriously considering creating multiple characters of the same class because they were so frustrated with respeccing. They didn't do it, of course, because not only is the idea intuitively preposterous, but you've got to deal with keys, reputation, acquiring gear for both, etc. Things that you shouldn't have to do if you already have a druid/warrior/shaman/etc. And they're unlikely to fully remove these barriers, even if they provide some help for them.
And a point that always seems to come up: If rigid talent specs are supposed to make you feel "attached" to your character, then forcing you to roll alts is extremely counterproductive to that goal.
It amuses me that mostly DPS characters support this viewpoint.
I play a lot of hybrid classes, and it's essential, in a raid environment, that hybrids be able to respec to fit the current raid's needs. It prevents over-recruitment; if you didn't have that holy pally respec to Prot to aoe tank Hyjal trash waves, you'd have to recruit another Prot paladin, and that leads to people whining because they're only invited to raids for gimmick fights.
This is exactly why, as a hybrid class, I really dislike the idea of "talent stables" or "easy respecs." There is certainly an identity or immersion factor: when I rolled my shaman alt, I envisioned her as elemental; call it an infatuation with chain lightning. Further, I hate healing on my paladin; nothing against healing(my other alt is a resto druid) but the blandness of the paladin healing system gets me down. I play my paladin to tank; if respecs are cheap and easy; who will use a full time prot paladin? What incentive does blizzard have to make sure the spec is useful when there's no "gimmick" for it? If swapping to Holy is just a click away, none.
The root issue is that some specs, or more specifically, some quantity of like-spec'd characters are suboptimal for some encounters but not others. Tanking and healing being the obvious ones. Blizzard seems to be working on this on some fronts; increasing prot warrior dps is one step along these lines; making encounters more consistent in their raid requirements is the big issue which will need to be addressed.
I play my paladin to tank; if respecs are cheap and easy; who will use a full time prot paladin? What incentive does blizzard have to make sure the spec is useful when there's no "gimmick" for it? If swapping to Holy is just a click away, none.
I play my paladin to ... play paladin. What does it matter if its full time prot or holy anyway? I mean, for me it doesn't matter a bit. For me it matters that I can play with it (raid in my case) and be useful to my guild while experiencing different "things" in game (be those bosses, specs or whatever).
I've seen that goldsink-"just few clicks away"-minigame more than enough now: 4 respecs for 6 Sunwell bosses (and that's only the weekly PvE side of my current game). Should I refuse to respec when my guild leader asks me to tank M'uru adds next time? I don't see it unnatural to respec prot since that, after all, is an aspect of the paladin class. Should I feel ashamed for not playing the game or my character the way somebody else sees it?
I think not.
[e]: for clarification, I don't mind speccing holy-prot-holy-prot-holy at all, its just that currently it is a bit of a hassle (200g + several portals, HS cooldowns, summons). I certainly don't want to see that made even more difficult to in the future.
I play my paladin to ... play paladin. What does it matter if its full time prot or holy anyway? I mean, for me it doesn't matter a bit. For me it matters that I can play with it (raid in my case) and be useful to my guild while experiencing different "things" in game (be those bosses, specs or whatever).
I've seen that goldsink-"just few clicks away"-minigame more than enough now: 4 respecs for 6 Sunwell bosses (and that's only the weekly PvE side of my current game). Should I refuse to respec when my guild leader asks me to tank M'uru adds next time? I don't see it unnatural to respec prot since that, after all, is an aspect of the paladin class. Should I feel ashamed for not playing the game or my character the way somebody else sees it?
I think not.
[e]: for clarification, I don't mind speccing holy-prot-holy-prot-holy at all, its just that currently it is a bit of a hassle (200g + several portals, HS cooldowns, summons). I certainly don't want to see that made even more difficult to in the future.
The problem is different people see this differently. And Blizzard has really encouraged the other point of view from yours! Which is this: World of WarCraft doesn't have 9 classes. It has 27 classes. Many, many people think of the game that way, and this has heretofore been encouraged by talent tree design forcing you to specialize to such a huge degree.
So there are many people who think "I'm a Prot Pally, I tank" and that's the class they are, Prot Pally. Respeccing is like changing to a different class and they're not interested in that. This even goes to the extent that you get people with Paladins/Shamans/Priests/Druids or Warriors/Paladins/Druids who will refuse to heal or tank, even if they're level 27 and it doesn't matter what spec they are.
Now, me personally... I actually take a bit of a "hybrid" view of that. I roll a character with the intention of playing a specific spec, but I always try and collect the best offset I can for every role. I dislike respec'ing, but I also feel that having healing spells etc means I need to be prepared to fill that role, even if as an offspec. Also I have a Prot Pally, a Holy Priest, and a BM Hunter all at 70 and roughly equally geared. Which may explain most of my distaste for respec'ing, honestly
The problem is different people see this differently. And Blizzard has really encouraged the other point of view from yours! Which is this: World of WarCraft doesn't have 9 classes. It has 27 classes. Many, many people think of the game that way, and this has heretofore been encouraged by talent tree design forcing you to specialize to such a huge degree.
If the intention of Blizzard indeed was to make 27 classes (30 in the expansion) surely they've had added specialization selection to the character creation screen and disabled respeccing, no?
On a more serious note, I think the intention of Blizzard was to make it possible to play the game with "my" mindset and "your" mindset. You indeed can make a BM hunter and never respec. If that suits you best then blizzard has designed the game to satisfy your needs. My needs are different and I *can* respec now relatively easy. My needs are fulfilled too.
Making respeccing hard/impossible will cater one audience.
Making respeccing easier will cater both audiences (you don't HAVE to respec if you don't want to - you can be just as much BM hunter as you wish)
It really doesn't take much business logic to choose from these two options.
From the looks of it Blizzard are making tanks and other specs less "useless" when they arn't needed for their primary role or needed for another role.
For example, a boss needs 3 tanks on one fight and only 1 on another fight, the tanks that arn't tanking are being given more utility and/or dps to validate thier spot without having to respec. You can see this being done in the Death Knights talent trees, the Warriors Protection talent tree is getting added utility (Vigilance, Safeguard, imp Disarm) and dps talents (Incite) and scaling abilites, Druids are getting a boost in melee dps and, presumably, Paladins will also be getting something similar possibly in the form of being able to heal, dps and/or utility.
On the other side, they are also making it easier to change spec's very quickly if you want to with the 2nd talent spec.
Making respeccing hard/impossible will cater one audience.
Making respeccing easier will cater both audiences (you don't HAVE to respec if you don't want to - you can be just as much BM hunter as you wish)
It really doesn't take much business logic to choose from these two options.
That's precisely the point. The current system seems to be working fine. You said it yourself, you respec as needed. Perhaps your guild pays for it, in which case the benefit to changing things is basically nothing for you. Perhaps it doesn't; 50g seems to be working fine to keep things discrete for people like me, and yet be malleable enough for those who want to change. There's no reason to upset the apple cart.
As for "having to respec," what do you think will happen if there's a "talent stable" and respecc'ing is as simple as clicking a button? What's the incentive for blizzard to make sure prot warriors can do some dps and that a prot paladin has something worthwhile to do for every encounter?
06/30/08, 3:14 PM
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