

If you’re given the choice between a talent that gives you a crowd control ability and one that boosts single-target damage, the latter will always be the correct choice (at least in a PvE context). The Mists model is more about how your character does things, and that’s where true character customization can exist. The old system was about determining what your character can do, and that will always lead to a clear right and wrong answer.
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There will always be a “best” choice, and there will always be people who just let Google tell them how to play, but what the Mists talent system did was make life livable for those of who choose to chart our own course. I still don’t Google my builds, and I still pick whatever seems cool to me, but no longer does it hold me back in any way. It was still enough to get by in the lower-end content I focused on, but I was certainly making my character - and by extension my groups - noticeably less efficient.īy comparison, do you want to know how often I’ve gotten comments about my builds since the Mists model was implemented? Never. I was pulling significantly less DPS than the cookie cutter build. Those other players weren’t even entirely wrong for questioning my judgment, though the rudeness can’t be justified. At best, it was well-intentioned (but still unasked for) advice, but more often it came in the form of snide comments, vote kicks, and outright harassment. The barrage of unsolicited build critiques was almost endless. As I’m someone who did step off the beaten path of character builds back then, let me assure you: It sucked. I myself went for an eclectic “frostfire” build that used primarily Fire talents, but with some dips into Frost and using Frostfire Bolt as my main nuke. And yes, the option for more exotic builds existed. “But just because a lot of people went for cookie cutter builds doesn’t mean you had to,” some might say. It was such a rare occurrence I can still remember it in detail a decade later. In all my countless hours of play in the Wrath era, I encountered a grand total of one other Mage who wasn’t using that cookie cutter Arcane build, a Gnome Fire mage I encountered during a random run of heroic Drak’Tharon Keep.

At most two or three talent points (out of dozens) might be different between them, and never in any way that would noticeably change how a character plays. Arcane specialization with the same distribution of talents. Do you know how many mage builds I saw during all those inspections?Įvery person had the same build. Especially Mage players, as my main was a Mage at the time. During those moments, I’d often inspect other players to look over their builds (yeah, I’m weird). Being a bored teenager with nothing better to do, I spent a lot of time in the game, and that often led to downtime in the major cities. I first started playing WoW in Wrath of the Lich King. But I stake the claim that it is a massive improvement over what came before. I won’t claim that the Mists model is perfect or that it has no room for improvement. The effects of each choice are much more dramatic than in the old model. The Mists model offers a choice of one of three talents every 15 levels or so each tier tends to follow a theme (crowd control, AoE, etc.), and the options may include passive or active abilities. Most of these were passive stat-increases, but occasionally you’d get one that adds a new active ability or alters the functionality of an old one. The old system awarded talent points from nearly every level-up, which could be spent to unlock various nodes. The original talent tree system that persisted in one form or another from launch up to and including Cataclysm, and the tiered choice system introduced in Mists of Pandaria and used up to now (hereafter referred to as the Mists model). WoW has had many revamps of its talent system over the years, but by and large it can be broadly divided into two models. Nostalgia can cover for a lot, and I think too many have forgotten just why those talent trees were dropped in the first place. Some have welcomed this return to WoW‘s roots, but I see this as nothing but a step backward. As World of Warcraft‘s Dragonflight expansion marches into alpha testing, we’re getting more glimpses at its new/old talent system, which harkens back to the talent trees of yore.
