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I miss the pre-2008 skill trees really badly
Mors.Magne
Member UncommonPosts: 1,549
I really miss the pre-2008 skill trees.
I loved the way you had freedom to customise your character more every level.
I liked building up my Fire Mage's fireball spell level-by-level until it could take down the average monster in 2 hits! I even managed to partially spec in frost so I could kite masterfully.
Does anybody else miss them, and is there any sort of campaign to get them back?
Comments
i love my fire mage and i can still do all that right now. Although the skill and talent trees have changed drastically over time, they are still pretty good. I would agree that a little bit more talents would be nice but i do like that right now every talent that i choose now is viable. Back when there was a bagillion talents everyone was limited to one cookie cutter build because the rest was useless and the elitists wouldnt accept your home made build.
My favorite was my elemental instant cast mage build that was awesome right up until the Ice Block "hypothermia" balance. All the stuff they added into BC made it where that mage build, which was extremely niche but I had SOOOOO much fun with, was suddenly imbalanced with the rest of the game. Sucked man, but then I really liked my Shatter Frost/Fire build mage after having to readjust my spec. Then they balanced away from "Impact" stun, and the build was pointless.
It's whatever, I'm sure they are perfectly fine where they are at in the current game and for a lot of players Mages are likely top of the class structure, but they aren't fun to me where they are at. It's whatever, but I LOVE to remember the fun I had with those builds.
People think it's fun to pretend your a monster. Me I spend my life pretending I'm not. - Dexter Morgan
I disagree with you, but correct me if I'm wrong...
These days, the Fire Mage build only works like it used to once you have reached level 90 AND you have attained all the best gear (that will elevate your critical damage percentage adequately).
Until these conditions are met, Fire Mage is the worst of the 3 specs: Leveling as a Fire Mage from level 1 to 90 and then doing all the activities in order to get the needed kit will make most people rage quit well beforehand.
If you can only get a Fire Mage to work right at the very very end-game, there's no point because there is nothing more to play for!
I hate to say this, but I think you are the worst kind of fan - you applaud a game / developer when they do the wrong thing.
Nope..... no need for correcting..... Maybe they're someone who wasn't there for the actual skill tree.
I'm in the same boat as you. I liked having different trees and being able to allocate across those trees, and actually allocating points into skills. As it stands now it's basically, 1) Select a role/tree, 2) Make 10 skill selections, they'll give you the rest. *yawn*!
I think that dumbing it does doesn't solve any problems. I believe the explanation given was that most people were just specing in a specific way anyway. Well, yeah, because that's what makes sense in many cases. I'm in the same boat as you, though, I actually speced my characters much differently than what is the norm. Taking away choice or depth is never a good decision IMO.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Because it is wrong in your eyes it has to be the wrong way, full stop?
I personally fail to see how 729 different combinations is giving you less choice than you had previously? I much prefer the way that it is now to the cookie cutter "illusion of choice" trees that we used to have. Some people may have had their odd quirky builds in the past, but if you wanted to have any impact on certain aspects of the game you were going to end up with the same build as everyone else sooner or later.
I have various characters but always played an 'arcane' mage and mostly solo PvE stuff, so i love the fact that i can have an ice barrier on my arcane build now as that is much more useful to me than several other items that i had to put points in to just to get to a single item that i needed.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Yeah me too
I remember back in BC I completely outDPSed everyone as low gear ele/enh shaman in mt. hyjal - so screw the cookie cutter builds - its just a lazy excuse made by lazy players
It was much more fun doing the maths and trying some very weird stuff, like moonkinroot/bearstun druid
Now every talen line is basicaly the same crap in different coats
its just so baaaad and sad
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
The original talent trees had absolute GARBAGE level by level. Would you choose things like "+1% to wand damage" or the old "Sanctity Aura" for bonus holy damage for the party in 2014? The main fans of the old trees were the specs getting ridiculous power through hybriding abilities not meant to be mixed at the time. You can see the same thing in SWTOR talent tree today, and the devs there have to nerf things to balance hybrids out there too. I like getting something every level while levelling, but it was an illusion of choice because there was only one choice for the spec you wanted to play.
I like the concept of the current perk system, but it's presented in a really boring way. The UI and feel is really crappy, and you should probably get your choices all unlocked before level cap. I don't have any good fix for it, but it's better than the pointless trees we had before that wanted to give the diablo 2 feel without the diablo 2 freedom(or synergies).
Agree.
Even if the real talent choices most of the time were some kind of illusion, i liked them a lot better than as they are now.
All Time Favorites: EQ1, WoW, EvE, GW1
Playing Now: WoW, ESO, GW2
I'd say this was largely the result of you building prison walls of your own making, not because of any real need to do so. Min/Maxing is the bane of this genre and I guess one thing we really have WOW to thank for solidifying it so firmly in player's minds.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The talent tree changes were one thing that really killed the game for me. I do understand why they did it, and it does make it easier for new players to jump in, but I still find myself missing the old trees when I log in to check things out every 6 months or so.
I think it's better for the game in the long run, so I'm not going to focus on the negatives surrounding it, but I can understand the nostalgia for the old choices.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
I miss the old trees as well.
I also remember that the serious guilds (Raiding or PVP) would tell you how to select your talents if you wanted a slot. It was a lot of work to demonstrate how something that varied could be viable, because the theorycrafters had already worked out the math.
Now, it's largely a matter of playstyle, because most of the talents don't have much effect on the numbers at the end of the day, with certain exceptions.
Back in the day it was nice to get a point to spend every other level, but these days it's irrelevant because you level so quickly it doesn't matter.
When they announced that they were going to simplify the trees I was hoping to see something like D3 where you choose a skill and then select from a range of variations on how that skill functions. But it's really kind of sad how they ended up implementing it.
And I agree, min/maxers are the worst thing to happen to video games in general. Not just WoW or MMO's, but just overall. The game ends up being designed around them because optimal specs tend to trivialize everything.
Vanilla WoW's best feature was how rough around the edges it was and allowed for fun. I made a 1h+shield dps paladin that worked specifically because there was an epic 1h axe that granted a chance of extra attack on hit (Flurry Axe). I enchanted it with Fiery and used it with Seal of the Crusader for the 40% inc attk speed. I was getting 1 regular attack per second (attack speed hadn't been normalized at that time) and proc'ing extra attacks all the time. Ah so fun.
Also missed my reckbomber paladin.
MMO's are at their best when they're not mulled over by spreadsheeters.
The funny part about this post, is I had the same exact paladin build, based around the Flurry axe when it was 3 extra attacks that was later nerfed to 1. You could really mess people up as a Prot Pally with the return attacks and procs, it was probably the most fun I have had with a Paladin type character in any game to date.
Really cool to see that someone else had the same type of idea and build back in the pioneering days of WoW
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
It never had a huge impact on me as i didn't raid much from BC onwards, but you know as much as everyone else that if you wanted a spot within a raiding guild you had to have the proven build, like it or not. There is some mention of the guys playing with the math and proving their builds were better, but all that did was set the new standard that everyone else would then copy and that was very much the exception rather than the rule.
All the new system has done is give everyone what they would have had no choice in anyway and given them more freedom to customise their characters to suite their style of play and i cannot see how that is a bad thing.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I would have to agree, I miss it to. I thoroughly enjoyed my Hybrid Feral/Resto Druid. Far enough down into Resto to get Nature's Swiftness, the rest into Feral. Nice having a near instant emergency heal. Was wonderful in PVP and general soloing in PVE. Hell, tanked pretty much all of the raids like that.
It started going downhill from there. That is part of the reason I quit Mid-Cata...
Raquelis in various games
Played: Everything
Playing: Nioh 2, Civ6
Wants: The World
Anticipating: Everquest Next Crowfall, Pantheon, Elden Ring
With the game in it's twilight years, switching to a cooler point system like in marvel heroes or diablo 2 would be a good move. The trees in WoW were nothing like D2. Those trees defined your characters playstyle, not just adding small bonuses.
Stop giving away abilities, make players choose what they want to use and specialize in.
I don't know if you guys remember but when trees were around there was some extreme class imbalance because some people were just better at picking talents and gearing for those talents. The ones who weren't good at picking talents complained on the forums and it was a 24/7 balancing act/headache for Blizzard.
I would have prefered that to what it is now because now it is very bland/standardized and I am never amazed at anything another class ever does. I would really admire the specialty specs other players used, even if I was getting killed by them.
Pre-2008 you had zero alternatives and everything was cookie cutter. I had a cookie cutter build without even looking it up as all the choices were blatant. Now I swap a choice talent here n there on certain bosses and actually got more diversity. Granted I don't pick any oooo ahhhhh abilities like in the pre-2008 skill trees but now I actually change the build a little bit now and then and there is more choice flavor now than back then. Granted there is still no significant flavor change as the class really plays the same still.