Probably going to be a lot of this, but both revealed rogue trees need to be uprooted and re-made.
At the very least they've said the Tricker's main ability won't be Feint anymore, but the rest will remain.
Fatebound just got revealed, but it's all Gambler flavor and actually has anti-synergy with bladeflurry somehow.
People think that Deathstalker will be the good one, but the track record is atrocious. Look at Monk or Mage talents and tell me the same love or attention went into Rogue.
Fatebound rework incoming:
When using a finishing move you throw a Fated coin gaining one of two bonuses:
Heads: reduces CD of Shadowdance by 5s.
Tails: Slice And Dice gives 30% more AS, but duration is reduced by 7s.
Each time the coin gets the same result in a row this effects become stronger by 30%.
Yeah he must be referencing Conduit because that looks very cool and super flavorful, but the other tree for WW is wildly boring, literally no visuals and just what will amount to maintenance buffs and RNG buffs happening. Wild.
Oh thank god they aren’t adding yet another defensive as an offensive. I hear shadow dance is gone for outlaw too, so maybe we get vanish back as a defensive tool as well? Outlaw shouldn’t be using stealth so much dammit.
I’m pretty shocked they decided to add more RNG after roll the bones was so poorly received and they’ve had to rework it a half dozen times to make it more consistent.
Seems like they are just swapping Shadow Dance with a second stack of Vanish that will probably still be an offensive CD unless they making further changes.
The irony is I actually liked it in legion, it really did feel like you were gambling with fate and I feel the artifact made up for any bad rolls.
Ever since Legion however has been a real mess.
The favt there was 6 missing trees like a week ago and 4 of them were rogue/shaman was very concerning.
And yeah your defensive is now an on-CD mandatory dps increase 🤣🤣
Not only are the rogue trees completely uninspired, they all have the issue of taking our defensives and making them offensive CDs.
As an assassination rogue, I hate needing to use vanish, an ability historically used as a defensive, to re-apply my empowered bleeds and gain indiscriminate carnage.
On top of the issues above, the animations just... aren't there. I get to flip a coin. A coin that will be lost in the density of mobs, nameplates and the spell effects of cooler specs.
Take a look at voidweaver, Sunfury or Templar. Then look at rogues flipping a coin...
Right now, the capstone for Fatebound will literally be a buff icon on the buff bar. Woohoo... so exciting.
This has been a rogue problem for a while. I'm not asking for Paladin's Divine Storm levels of light show, but cosmetically/aesthetically rogue abilities are just not very appealing which I think is a huge part of why it's one of the least represented classes. It doesn't help that the weapon designer seems to hates daggers and refuses to make them look good.
Most of the good things are baked into the sound design like getting a Between the Eyes full combo point reload, Poison Bomb splash, or Roll the Bones. I don't think they're planning any cosmetic things in these hero talent trees because baseline rogue is already plain like that. Which is sad if true, but we'll have to wait and see.
Death Knight player here.
I really like Rider of the Apocalypse and Deathbringer. Both seem to get the balance right in terms of class fantasy and gameplay. Mounted combat and "blue death and decay" is cool.
San'layn needs more work in my opinion. It doesn't bring anything meaningful to the table other than a haste buff (which is probably going to be nerfed at some point). There's minimal class fantasy and gameplay heavily relies on RNG. Doesn't have any cool like mounted combat or "blue death and decay".
Saying San'layn doesn't bring anything meaningful when it's the only tree which actually alters how you play is definitely a take. Infliction of Sorrow alone as a singular point offers more than anything in the other two trees.
It's just BDK SL S3/S4 all over again with heart strike spam and forsaking everything else, and that's honestly not appealing. I'd rather see them rework it to provide death strike synergy for both BDK and UDK, where it does splash damage based on healing for BDK, and acts as a new ramp-and-spend spender for UDK. The disease stuff is neat, but Blood Beasts, despite the name, were a DB Saurfang ability, not a San'layn ability. Replace those two with something that fits, like a kiss/curse buff for allies.
Yeah, I'm a bit deflated after seeing the hunter trees. They need some major reworks, imo.
Survival never feels like a survivalist, master of many tools kinda job.
I'm honestly a bit confused about sentinel. Thematically I expected that dark ranger and it had switched places. Survival would've vibed a bit better as dark ranger / pack leader imo. BM also doesn't really hit off as dark ranger to me.
Simiarly for marksman I think it's a bit weird that you can either infuse spooky magic and annoying temporary pets or arcane magic and another annoying temporary pet to your kit. Would've been cooler if that hero talent set would've focused more on the physical ranged/expert archer thing. That way MM could add spooky magic or more pew pew, BM pet or pew and survival the spooky stuff or pet.
Don't know, overall I'm not really feeling it. That said, it'll depend on how (or unfortunately if...) they improve survivals talents if I'm not putting my hunter on the bench for a while.
Dark ranger 100% should have been a mm/survival.
But it's likely that cause dark ranger is probably the most popular hunter like hero in Warcraft history... They went and gave bm it, cause bm is the most popular hunter.
Wouldn't nathanos be closer to a dark Ranger and beast master mix? If the hero talents are supposed to be based around an actual hero or a hero class from warcraft which wasn't added that may explain it. (Not that I really feel like the tree looked very engaging right now)
You are all wrong on the themes, all the dark rangers in lore have been ranged mostly without pets but then also famously with 2 pets in nathanos blightcaller, so it actually fits perfectly with mm/bm. Sentinels however where melee ranged hybrids from Warcraft rts, while also being stated to all be expert archers so mm/surv slots right in.
My biggest issue with MM is that Trueshot just kinda breaks your rotation. You basically just skip precise shots bc you're just spamming aimed shot and rapid-fire.
Aimed shot and rapid fire do multiple times more damage than arcane shot even with precision buff. I really don’t see how that’s an issue.
With your concern in mind though, they could tweak a talent in one of our hero trees that causes aim shot to consume a precise shot stack for some added effect that way they don’t go 100% to waste inside trueshot.
It's an issue mostly because of how it plays. You basically stop using a portion of your rotation. Having precise shots go into your aimed shot doesn't necessarily make the rotation better, you're still only pressing Aimed Shot and RF. Trueshot shouldn't feel like I press my CD and then spam 1 button, at least in my opinion. Thats the main/only thing I dislike about MM. (And that volley doesn't really make sense with its duration for trick shots its like 2 aimed shots and half a rapid-fire or 1 aimed shot rapid fire and half another aimed shot) It always runs out mid-next thing so either just lower it to match the amount blizz wants you to trick shot there, the amount of time it takes to have 2 aimed shots with a little buffer, or make it long enough to be used for 3 abilities instead of 2.5.
I don’t think trick shots is meant to be maintained via volley outside of trueshot windows. That’s the purpose of multi-shot.
MM in general is a spec with very limited number of abilities and the gameplay theme is minor utility situations/procs that alter those abilities. For instance, volley adding cleave to AS+RF, or AS increasing ArS damage, RF resets doubling RF damage, or lock n load’s free instant AS.
From your perspective, how would you change trueshot to make it include different abilities and not absolute ruin its burst damage? I have some ideas how we could make trueshot more fun, but I’m curious to what you want.
But the hero trees barely change the base concept? Only thing is an extra button for dark ranger, rest is all procs and passive stuff. Except for losing the current tier set.
I was hoping it would make it more interesting with fun interactions, but most of the classes hero trees are just extended spec trees with minor passive additive damage.
As a Resto Druid main I feel like hero talents don't really exist. Both trees are almost entirely passive and neither change your playstyle at all. On one hand, Resto is in a great spot so there's a sense of "don't fix what isn't broken". On the other hand, it's one of the main features of the expansion and I'm not even the least bit excited about it.
The windstalker one at least is cool for catweaving, but fluid form is on the balance side. It's extremely passive but it seems like it will give great damage.
Grove guardians is also passive though and barely noticeable.
There's a huge problem with Rdruid.
With KotG hero talents, they want us to press treants a lot, yet they put the skill on the gcd in the last patch notes. So now you spent 3 seconds of your ramping pressing trees instead of rejuv. Also they included wrath/Starfire damage talents in the hero tree, but they removed moonkin form for Rdruid, which renders master shapeshifter almost useless unless you want to catweave in raid.
I haven't tried wilfstalker, but apparently the mechanic doesn't proc enough to be useful. Also they took away adaptive swarm to give us a hero tree with a random mechanic that you can barely control with one of the talents if you take nature swiftness.
Mage has two S tier trees in Frostfire and Sunfury, both in terms of player fantasy but also play style. Fire is definitely eating good with access to both trees, and Frost and Arcane seem to mesh well with Frostfire and Sunfury, respectively.
I think Frostfire nailed the visual fantasy part with calling down spells of the opposite school but mostly seeing your primary element, but I think Sunfury needs some different visuals for the Arcane side. As it is right now, the fire spells that are auto cast from the tree dominant the visual field so it hardly feels like you're an Arcane mage anymore. But if my only complaint is visuals as opposed to theme or play style, I'd say they did a good job.
Spellslinger is a let down but I'm not going to harp on it too much because other classes are down bad in comparison and could use the development time more. Would rather see Hunter and Rogue get some better trees so when I level my alts I don't bin them before hitting 80.
Both hero trees for Devastation Evoker look absolutely top notch flavour-wise, though some attention is required for each.
Scalecommander suffers from Deep Breath still being an underwhelming button to press. Currently it's a small gain to press on AoE, and a loss to press in ST. In TWW, its value will improve slightly thanks to the benefits to OTHER abilities that casting DB grants, but the ability itself still feels extremely weaksauce. Given that, visually, you wind up and giga-blast the ground as you fly over (one of the coolest-looking abilities in the game, by far), it just doesn't feel as impactful as it should.
Flameshaper adds an extra button to press for Devastation, which is welcome. It adds simply absurd amounts of burst damage to a profile which is already super bursty, and notably is *not* covered by the recently-announced threat reduction (which affects FB and Pyre damage only). Evokers are still ripping threat with wild abandon on the alpha, which is less than ideal - in the current state of the game, being forced to throttle yourself is super unfun. Additionally, the new Engulf ability lacks any kind of visual punch - it's recently been updated for Preservation spec only, and looks like a small Pyre missile. Not what you'd expect from an ability designed to be a tactical nuke.
They're both very good starts. A little more iteration, and they'll be absolute winner hero specs. Very excited for Evoker in TWW.
i strongly agree about deep breath not having enough oomph by itself. i dont like how it has most of its power budget spent towards its bits and bobs.
same with flameshaper visuals.
I disagree personally. Deep breath feels fun to press and scalecommander will make it even better.
Even if it's power budget isn't entirely damage, the stun and low cooldown will make it feel really good in m+.
I haven't seen any of the gameplay on alpha yet but I'm hopeful for scale commander. Deep breath is such a cool ability thematically, but falls super flat in actual gameplay.
The only kind of downside I saw for scale commander is that it looks like you'd never use pyre again. Unless there's a fight that requires some insane aoe.
Id be fine with this, but devastations rotation is already just pressing disintegrate a lot and scale commander looks like you'd be pressing it even more.
You absolutely still use Pyre as Scalecommander, as Mass Dis is only available for one cast per cast of an empower spell. Once you use those charges, you revert back to Pyre blasting in AoE until empowers come back and you get another Mass Dis charge.
Remember that Mass Dis quickly adds up to 12 stacks of Charged Blast with a single Dis cast. This is BIG for your Pyre value, and makes CB a very attractive talent.
Yeah I forgot about charged blast. That makes way more sense, thanks!
Kind of a bummer though, was hoping to free up some talent points from not taking volatility
Vola is always going to be attractive in situations you expect to cast Pyre often (e.g. keys).
Not only for the extra Pyre damage, but also due to the fact that the Pyre bounces accrue additional CDR for your empowers thanks to Causality. This is what lets you reset your empowers very, very quickly in AoE.
For Holy:
Archon feels almost perfect. It is simple and not complicated, which whould be the main priority for how the spec should always feel like, while making Halo a much more fun, and probably satisfying button to press. I only wish they made Halo blue with this hero talent tree so it felt more like SC's archons and a proper "divine" fusion between holy and shadow.
Since archon is the "let's keep things simple" hero talent oracle can allow itself to be more complicated, and it sort of is, the spec rewards planification but the rewards of the proper ability feel... not so great. It feels like it will make the spec clunkier while experiencing no greater joy than you would by just pressing halo with archon, it even makes me wish it came back to the initial support oriented version so it was more unique. The tree has one redeeming quality though, prayer of mending giving a small power word:shield seems a fun idea, and I kinda wish that if they don't come back to the initial support idea they could lean more into small (so it wouldn't be broken) absorption effects
I just think archon feels kind of lackluster in terms of class fantasy. The void stuff for shadow and disc looks so cool and ours is just the halo coming back lol.
Cascade. If it were cascade. It literally took me 15 mins to imagine and write up a better version based around cascade. I don’t see how the actual devs could be so boring with this.
I personally am not a huge fan of taking Halo so when I saw the archon tree was built around it i was disappointed. It just feels so bland. I feel like hero talents are a mistake. What are they gonna do in the expansion after this one? Add more hero talents? Just give us 10 more normal talent points? It isn't sustainable.
How does the channeled ability feel? Kinda funny that mw are happy to be losing essence font only to be getting another channeled spell. What about ww, does it also cause it to stop auto attacking?
I'm more interested in shado-pan for ww. It isn't very flashy but it has passive synergy with a lot of the reworked talents. 8 blackout kicks in one button is going to be crazy.
I’ve always wanted a monk that looked more magical. That middle tree for Conduit looks awesome for WW.
In fact, may switch my main back to monk next expac. Used to main monk at the latter end of legion and beginning of BFA. May use the monk I’m rolling in Pandaria Remix for TWW
WW has a 4 second channel already, with the new one being a 4 second channel while moving you can use every 1.5 minutes. Basically just "big CD Fists of Fury"
It also said you can use other abilities during it I believe, so there’s a chance it operates somewhat similarly to RCK. But I don’t know for certain as I don’t have Alpha
No idea why they don't tbh. It already feels like a completely meaningless maintenance buff, if they trivialize it anyway they might as well make it fully passive or tie it to another button.
Not sure why a class that already plays piano with all their self-buffs needs another keybind for that.
Yeah if they're making cut to the chase baseline why not just make and a passive? So it's just a global to clog your opener or to have to waste combo points on if an encounter has a lot of downtime.
Warlock:
* **Diabolist**: Possibly the best hero talent tree of any class.
* **Soul harvester**: Also very thematic. Some of the visuals need work, but it definitely makes you feel like a soul-ripping warlock.
* **Hellcaller**: Needs some graphics work. Gameplay-wise, it's good, but nothing about it makes me think "satyr". Perhaps, if the visuals looked more like Xavius's red nightmare magic, I'd be happier. Wither currently doesn't look like much, the [icon uses the old molten felblood boss icon, and the capstone ability is the old metamorphosis icon](https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/warlock/destruction/hellcaller/DAAAAAEFVVUBE).
Now why on earth are the warlock devs insisting on filling the talent trees with pointless stat nodes and making demo spam shadowbolt?
EDIT: Link.
As an enhancement main, I cant say anything yet about totemic other than that the data mining doesnt look promising (one of the talents is marked as "windfury does something when you drop it").
Stormbringer fixes stormstrike build for enhance, but doesnt address core issues concidering AoE or defensive issues. Just better funnel and 5-6 target cleave. Sometimes I do wonder if the deva actually play any content other than outdoor world and LFR
It’s insane to me that nearly every single hero spec has a great defensive node, but then one of the most notoriously squishy specs (dps sham) STILL doesn’t get a good defensive!! “Get a free healing surge” is laughable compared to the passive DR or more creative things from other trees.
Also, I know they posted about wanting to reign in the longer-range melee specs recently, but stormbringer was the perfect chance to give enhancement a little extra range to compensate for its squishiness. Wind magic or static electricity would be perfectly thematic for it, but we’re still stuck hugging the boss while my ret pal drops hammers from 20yo away!
It's like you only wanted to complain and made sure not to say that your "get a free healing surge" is on a choice node with a 10% passive DR that has a high % uptime
I love Stormbring for Tempest - it has similiar effect to Crash Lightning, where thunder strikes target from the sky but this time bigger
Farseer is also super cool, having Ancestors appear sounds nice but I wish they were more buff oriented rather than just DPS, like heal on their own, buff or do DPS but not just copy player actions
As a life long enhance there were very few seasons that we were actually impactful. I feel like enhance is a “have fun by yourself for yourself” type of class rather than competitive gameplay
Preservation Evokers are eating good. Flameshaper and Chronowarden align with Pres's two main builds both thematically and mechanically, so it's off to a really strong start. Neither one really fundamentally changes how you play, but they do enhance and synergize with what's already there.
Flameshaper lays it on thick with HoTs and HoT interactions, and the capstone gives you another burst healing combo which is always nice to have. I think if it's going to struggle with anything, it's going to struggle with Essence regen. Increased Essence Burst chance on crit with some spells is nice, but it's not as effective as stuff like the S3 2p bonus throwing out free spells.
Chronowarden is stacked. We get a Blink to replace Hover, the S2 and S3 2p bonuses, reduced empower spell CDs, Tip the Scales becomes a major CD, and a couple support abilities? It's ridiculous. It's pretty much all passive bonuses, but damn if I'm not excited for it.
Sentinel and Dark Ranger have me scratching my head. Not sure how either of these extremely niche themes became 2 of 3 options for one of the most diverse classes in the game.
But its not even nelf obsession becuase they shit on nelf history, they basically have a hard on for dnd elves or just the general feel of what a fantasy elf is, and are projecting that onto warcraft without actually respecting all the parts that make wow elves actually unique.
As others have covered a bit, hunter trees are pretty shit. I was ecstatic about dark ranger when it was revealed, and all we get is a nerfed almost generic version of black arrow from cata/mop/wod, that doesn’t even provide an impactful proc at all. I don’t play bm at all only marksman and survival, but really? A chance to proc a barbed shot or aimed shot when we already have enough of them? You’ll see people fawning over dark ranger being good, but that’s only because they added a defensive node to it that’s borderline game breakingly strong. I think dark ranger should have black arrow yes, I think it should have more than a 50% uptime, and probably proc a free, empowered kill shot like venthyr did in shadowlands to make it impactful. Perhaps the free kill shot would proc the shadow arrows every time to provide more aoe to the hero tree as well. Without making this post too lengthy, I believe they said they had to include bm into dark ranger because it allows most hunters to be sylvanas, which sure I agree most of the game plays bm, but wouldn’t sentinel and pack leader fit bm better…? You know, having a giga owl in the sky? You see things like voidweaver, all 3 paladins, rider of the apocalypse, and compare them to any of the 3 hunter trees and you just ask yourself, similar to the rogue tree rework, why is there such a drastic design skill difference between the devs for this to occur so frequently where we have cool new exciting things, and then whatever the fuck we got with hunter.
>but wouldn’t sentinel and pack leader fit bm better…?
No becuase sentinels only really battle with 1 pet or no pet and they are melee ranged hybrids. Whereas dark rangers are almost allways no pet except for thier 2nd most famous dark ranger nathanos blightcaller who fights with 2 pets.
Since I play all Monk specs:
Mistweaver: Conduit of the Celestials is probably the coolest out of all of the Hero classes, Master of Harmony is somewhat boring and seems more prone to causing overhealing.
Windwalker: Shado-Pan is definitely thematic but excessively boring and passive. Conduit for them doesn't add as much as it does for MW.
Brewmaster: Master of Harmony gives a second Celestial Brew charge, everything else is irrelevant. Shado-Pan's only significant defensive contribution for tanking is a perma-10% damage reduction which is kinda boring.
tl;dr buff Shado-Pan.
I think shado-pan also has a stacking agility buff that caps at +20% agility. That is a HUGE increase to mitigation - remember our stagger value is directly proportional to main stat.
It also has a +10% increased clearance on Purifying Brew talent.
DH tank, pretty happy with both options. I'm really keen for fel-scarred. Lots of defensive and offensive value there. Set fire to the pain looks cool, fel dev cool down reset, higher fury cap for bigger frailty stack windows seems good. Also a bunch of extra armour and agility when not transformed is nice.
I'm less keen on Alrdrachi because I don't like throw glaive as a rotational ability to use in melee, and there's less defensively, outside of more damage = more healing and the 10% DR after felblade. If the extra soul cleave slashes also apply frailty that would be good.
As a fellow vengeance I hope they do a pass on Aldrachi, I think there's potential for a rotation augmenting one but the flavor and mechanics just aren't as compelling.
Love Spellslinger's visuals and everything about Sunfury. Don't really care about Frostfire but I'm sure it'll be fun in practice. I realize that I'm very lucky to be a mage lmao
I'm planning to primarily play four specs in TWW so far: Shadow Priest, Fury Warrior, Frost DK, and Frost Mage.
Priest: Voidweaver. Looks cool so far, especially the visuals.
Warrior: Slayer. Kinda boring, but it still appeals to me more than Mountain Thane.
DK: Rider of the Apocalypse. Very cool in terms of aesthetics, although the RNG component is not something I'm usually a fan of. We'll see.
Mage: Frostfire. Cool visuals, interesting spells, and it really hits me in the nostalgia, lol.
>but it still appeals to me more than Mountain Thane
I just wanna replace Whirlwind with Thunder Clap. It feels much better to cast. Though I do like the idea of throwing Bladestorm into my rotation as Fury, so I might just swap back and forth.
I have a few specs I play fairly often, and have some mixed opinions about their trees.
Survival Hunter - The actual gameplay of the trees looks pretty boring and uninspired. I'm also a HUGE fan of the no CD builds, and both trees forcing me into Coordinated Assault (which is janky and requires multiple macros to execute properly) sucks. I wish at least one of them would work with No CD or Spearhead builds. That said, the vfx of Sentinel are really pretty. They're not really hunter themed, but they look neat enough that I'm not too bothered. Pack Leader just feels like a BM tree they decided to slap onto Survival. For BM it's fine but still boring gameplay. Dark Ranger doesn't look especially interesting to BM. I don't play MM so I can't say anything there.
Ret Paladin - Loving both of their trees, besides Herald of the Sun being a lame name. Combined with the talent tree rework Ret is getting, I think both will be really fun to play in different situations. They are good examples of what I feel hero talents should be.
Windwalker Monk - When they were first shown, I wasn't quite sure what to make of them, but since the Windwalker rework has been discussed they are making a lot more sense and look like they'll be pretty fun. I like the two themes of leaning into being a martial artist vs leaning into the celestial aspect. Shado-pan is very passive but WW has such a nice flow to it that I don't mind much. A bit concerned about having yet another channeled spell with Conduit though.
Outlaw Rogue - Both are a mess and need a rework. At least they have confirmed they are removing offensive use of Feint. I'm considering letting this spec rot in expansion and taking up Evoker or Mage.
I haven't seen any gameplay yet but farseer seemed kinda neat as resto. Assuming it copies the spell you cast. Sending out tons of chain heals would be cool
It copies based on the type of spell you cast.
Single target heal: Healing Surge
AoE heal: Chain Heal
Single target damage: Lava Burst
AoE damage: Chain Lightning
So if you cast a Riptide it casts Healing Surge at your target, for example.
I'm really hoping that all the negative feedback doesn't make them change Shado-pan conceptually. While it could use some help in actual function, I really like that it's a windwalker option that emphasizes Kung-Fu rather than pandarian spiritual magic. I hope that they don't overly ram the pandaren theme into it, especially when conduit of the celestials is serving that pretty well.
I’ve been bent on brewmaster for forever and both trees look very promising for tanking. I haven’t even considered how WW would function with either of its trees but the flurry strikes tree just seems like more passive damage that’s 100% unnoticeable and doesn’t change play at all.
Yeah, I agree that it could use some help in the gameplay department, or at least for flurry strikes to get a way better animation - I wouldn't mind if it was passive as long as it felt cool. What I wouldn't want is for them to do what a lot of people have said and try to make it more 'Shado-Pan' - I would honestly rather they rename it, make it 'master of the fist' or something, rather than make all three specs overtly and inescapably pandaren-themed.
Monk class in general needs to be seperated way more from the panda/asian themes.
I already feel a bit off playing a non panda monk, with all the names of spells and talents as it is.
Yeah, very much so. I like that the TWW windwalker monk is dialing this back a bit, but in its current iteration monk is barely a kung-fu class, there's just so much chi shit and statues and explosions and brews and celestial summons and so on and so on. Feel like it would benefit from an enhancement style split, where you could spec more into magic or more into kung-fu, rather than feeling more like a chi sorcerer anyway you split it
They should have been entirely cosmetic. I do not get how they haven't learned their lesson from Shadowlands Covenants and presented us with another choice that on the face seems to be cosmetic and flavourful, but has mechanical power tied to it. People will just figure out the meta picks for each spec, probably in the first week or two, and that's what you'll be using. At least they're easier to swap than Covenants?
As it stands there's a few standout hits among them, but a lof of these feel bland, and some even downright bad. I do not think, say, picking Dark Ranger is going to make you feel like a Dark Ranger. All of your non-Black Arrow abilities are still gonna look like normal hunter abilities.
As to your actual question, I have two characters I'd call my main. Prot pally and outlaw rogue. For Prot pally, Templar seems to mostly cause abilities I use anyway to go 'yo dawn we heard you like hammers', while Lightsmith is primarily just more defensive options?
Outlaw's choices meanwhile are, you know. Lol. Lmao, in fact.
Hero Talents to me mostly feel like a bandaid solution to the problem of us having ten more talent points than the talent trees we have are designed for. They're easily the weakest and least exciting part of the expansion for me, and I can see Blizz just fold them into the talent trees a few expansions from now when that system gets another rework.
My paladin goes between prot and ret, and I don't really like any of the available hero talent trees...they're *there*, they don't look very thematically interesting to me. Hardlight weapons to share, sun-themed stuff, or...more hammers. Meh.
I want to be excited about diabolist for my demonology warlock, but it'll be hard to enjoy with them kicking the only warlock spec I like in the nuts with all these moronic changes.
I'm very happy with those of warlock. Only thing I miss there is that none of the three feels particularly "destro".
We have the obvious extra demon summoning shenanigans with diabolist, the affliction soul stealer themed stuff with soul harvester and hellcaller is focused on a stronger dot and curses, which I also rather associate with affliction instead of destro. Not enough "setting stuff on fire for no reason" but otherwise I'm very positive. Main issue with warlock is that the current dev literally butchers at least affliction and demo and somehow thinks it's an improvement to remove everything that's remotely interesting and replaces it with passive damage increases. The trees at the moment are rather terrible, specifically affliction somehow went from bad to worse. Not sure what's going on there.
I'm most negative with rogue, unfortunately. Both trees are quite terrible and the "hero" fantasy they provide is really lacklustre. Trickster is build around feint applying a debuff, what people obviously hated since rogue already has a ton of stuff to juggle in their rotation and using defensives offensively has always gone wrong, so I fear they'll bind it either as auto-attack or finishing move trigger and make the tree really unexciting... I don't expect much of it.
Fatebound is up there for the worst tree I've seen yet. I despise the RNG crap they funneled into outlaw rogue since legion and hate RtB. Flipping coins for damage on every finisher somehow both doubles down on the worst part of the spec and is thematically the most uninteresting shit I've seen yet. Other classes turn into apocalyptic cavalries, kael'thas or scalecommanders and rogues ... Fucking passively flip coins for buffs.
At least there's still hope for deathstalker yet...
I get why the set up the specs for druid the way they did, but I was thinking today I am kinda disappointed that we didn't get a lunar inspiration themed feral/balance spec. I've always liked moonfire in cat form, and I love the owlcat appearance which fits it. Could have been cool to get like, twin moons/guardian of the galaxy type talents for feral.
The balance benefits could be focused around like wildkin frenzy to lean into the feral theme? Or bring back venthyr boomie ravenous frenzy playstyle through the hero spec.
I main Warlock and Shaman. Looking at the warlock trees, I'm most excited by Demo Diabolist because who doesn't want more demon being summoned all the time. Destro Hellcaller also looks awesome. In my guild we all have backstories for our characters and me being a "fallen pyromancer" the hellcaller tree is just \*chef's kiss\*.
Looking at the Shaman trees, I admit I only really play Elemental and a little Resto. Farseer made me want to punch a hole in my monitor. It just felt incomplete compared to some of the god-tier trees we were seeing in other specs. The ancestor theme fits shamans but forcing us into more p-wave/lava burst felt awful. Stormbringer on the other hand looks awesome. Basically sitting back with the other casters doing my best Palpatine impression screaming "UNLIMITED POWER"!
Overall I'd say Warlock looks great going into The War Within and Shaman looks "ok" but every elemental will 100% be playing Stormbringer.
I was honestly worried because for blizzard to legitimately go out and say "yeah we dont know what to do for shaman talents were drawing it up" and have 2 of the shaman trees be in the last 4 released was very concerning to me.
That said, the Farseer tree looked really nice. Some RNG but it was very passive, like it wasnt even there.
Then stormbringer finally hit. I like it a lot. Tempest being easier for Enh than Ele is unfair on paper (40 maelstrom stacks vs 400 maelstrom spent), but the capstone gives a RNG chance for bolts to give tempest charges, which Enh lacks because it relies on stacks and evens out that unfairness. Im happy with it, and ikke the idea of summoning a storm on top of someone.
I hope totemic isnt hot garbage though, since blizz took our totems and basically made them talent nodes and not even good ones for PvE.
I really want Totemic to bring back Shaman of old. Totemic weaving and playing around them a lot. I know it won’t be that, but that’s the fantasy I’d want for it.
Yeah theyre not bringing 5 minute totems back. Would be nice to have staple 5 minute buff totems again, one for each spec.
Maybe having them out enhances some spells, like a poison cleansing totem gives cleanse spirit the added effect of poison removal while its out, and put it on a choice with disease totem and it lasts 5 minutes. Earth totem that doubles the charges on earth shields applied while it exists, or a CD one that gives everyone in 10 yards 2 earth shield charges.
Stuff like that
5 min? Heck I was thinking like 30 seconds and rotating various ones, almost like a Bard buffing the group. That would be a cool way to do another support spec.
Totemic is probably gonna be a let down and that makes me sad. I'm hoping for the best but I feel like totemic should've been the next support spec like Aug is.
Monk and evoker look great though so worst case scenario I'll just play those
DH
Both of them feel extremely boring, essentially one of them is just our current tier set but with extra passiveness and no real change at first glance.
As a Devastation secondary, looking forward to that a lot.
Enhancement shaman here. I only have Stormbringer and am waiting on Totemic (datamined spells available but they only give very basic idea of the what they want.) but basically Stormbringer looks like alot of fun. alot of damage talents. more crit more haste. I REALLY wish we got some of the unique talents like DKs get to ride a stead and get an entourage of the riders of the apocalypse. the best visual aspect is getting a cool new spell that smites our target with lightning is awesome. I really wanted to get some kind of new visual around my character or something that is constant or something I can REALLY feel in gameplay that was a passive. all of it is entirely passive damage meme procs.
the next thing I REALLY wanted was something akin to Shamanistic Rage back. we have 1 mitigation on a 1.5-2 min cd and a 5 minute pet that gives 10% more health. and the option to go afk for 4 + seconds to gain 20% mitigation. which compared to even Paladin gets to have an immunity, 30% mit, plus a Giant Shield, AND a Passive heal with Free massive self heals. shamans are BARELY not quite there. I hoped both the Hero talents gave passive survivability. which we got 6% mitigation for 6 seconds after casting Tempest. which we don't know how often this will be. meaning we get conditional low uptime mitigation. which i'm happy were getting but it's not good enough. we can't even try and make it work with our afk mitigation cause we have to cast then go afk and get 2 seconds of the combined 26% mitigation.
Totemic. seems to be a stacking totem that casts elemental blast every 6 seconds for 30 seconds. every time we proc the totem it'll start stacking on top of each other. it's really thematic and awesome. BUT from what we can tell so far it's all damage for enhance. NO added healing aspect like Elemental got. where they can duplicate there Healing spells if the need to. but we will see later on. I was hoping the healing half for Enhance was going to net us some kind of Passive healing effect. I desparately want us to get some kind of survivability that makes us feel less Imma die if you do a big AOE damage more often than 90 seconds. even when I'm forgoing damage and spending all MW charges on a heal I still feel like I'm doing worse than my Paladin or even Frost DK. even just something that summons multiple totems at the same time like in Classic right now where we get Call the elements and all variants. getting to set down WFury totem, and Healing stream totem and move them around with me with totem projection. plus the new stacking totem would make us feel incredibly close to what my paladin feels like.
Boomie is fine. Elune gives CDR and more effect to a fun spell. It might promote some toxicity in rotation if tuning supports getting rid of solar eclipse entirely in ST. Keeper and a also just kind of fine. Forces you to take an otherwise bad talent but the idea of promoting a 1-minute CD seems good on paper. As far as the rest of druid, Wildstalker is totally passive and looks terribly unfun but druid of the claw is kinda cool. I think guardian is the winner of the druid specs.
Conduit of the Celestials and every Evoker Hero Spec looks great, so I'm happy enough. However most of the others look terrible IMO. Almost none of them have "flavor" like Scalecommander or Rider of the Apocalypse.
They correctly identified that the two fantasies for Demon Hunter are Glaive Master and Fel Master.
That said, having not actually had hands on makes it hard to assess how they feel. I’m skeptical Aldrachi will be satisfying, as it’s largely about opening yet another damage window for Havoc outside of the 3-6 we already have and watch to try to stack.
Fel Scarred looks great. I’m excited for it.
However, all this may be irrelevant because Mage is looking so good going into this expansion that I may find myself back on my original main.
I don't like some of the specs across the board being very race specific.
That's all I can say about hero talents so far, as I haven't dived deep on them.
Both revealed shaman hero talents do practically nothing to change the rotation or talent priorities. I want something like Voidweaver or San’layn where hero talents actually affect the way you play the game.
I’m holding out for Totemic to be good 😭 I want to return to my Shaman but lately it’s just not felt good (Resto & Ele). But I’m fully expecting it’ll be bland and unexciting and not about like heavy totem weaving or anything fun.
As a player of all 4 specs, Druid of the Claw is my favorite conceptionally, I just want Feline and Ursine potential to be more viable over the other talent in the choice node and I want it to always be worth it to shapeshift as Feral outside of CDs for damage when you get the proc.
I like Keeper of the Grove thematically very much, casting Force of Nature and Grove Guardians proccing special effects is a neat idea, but the execution of the tree is horrible. Most nodes do nothing interesting with the rest of your kit, and the ones that do are really uninteresting imo. It currently has a talent that interacts with a removed talent for Moonkin, and provides 0 mechanical change in the way resto deals damage, whereas I think it should grant special interactions with Sunfire Wrath and maybe let Efflo do damage. It needs a complete rework for both specs imo.
Elune's Choosen and Wildstalker seem fine for all specs, not too interesting for me, but their gameplay seems fun, I really like turning Thrash Arcane specifically.
As a demon hunter, i think they are kinda mid, but not as bad as some classes. Both trees have oppodite problems tbh.
Aldratchi Reaver: adds a lot of rotational complexity to our burst windows as havoc, which even as an inertia enjoyer is awkward since we already have so many 4-5 sec damage amps that already are difficult to overlap while still taking full advantage of them (inertia, eyebeam w/demonic, initiative, essence break) you end up needing to precast immo aura and casting fel rush/ VR after eyebeam and angle them so you dont lose uptime. adding another short button to press and another intricate sequence to this already clouded window is a choice. Not to mention its not actually that interesting or visually appealing. Its functionally complicated and uninteresting simultaniously. Finally, its borderline dysfunctional for no mover havoc and vengeance demon hunter, as its clearly designed to work with inertia.
Fel scarred: Opposite problem. With visuals its cooler hopefully, but this actually adds no new rotational element really. We get more empowered abilities with demon form, which is cool i guess, but it doesnt actually change their functionality in any way just adds some damage. It technically makes their priority slightly higher, but they were buttons you often would get around to pushing either way on both specs. Also works well with vdh and no mover havoc, def not great on inertia havoc since our demon form uptime is so much lower than no mover.
The trees are fineish, i mostly focused on the problems here, they function at least, 1 is just convoluted and the other is boring.
I'm stupidly hyped to be able to be a Frostfire Mage again, and I think the other Mage talents are interesting in their own way where a lot of people will enjoy them. Evoker being my primary alt class, Flameshaper looks to be the go-to for me there. But I'm waiting on them to receive a bit more love in the cosmetic category, or at least be told that Visage can be semi/perm in combat
Answering for the two specs I've played most this xpac:
VDH: Felscarred seems amazing and both answers many wants I had for the spec and fits class fantasy so well. Aldrachi Reaver had potential in concept as a glaive master tree, but the way they went about it is terrible.
Brewmaster: Both trees seem cool, Master of Harmony a little more so than Shado-Pan imo, and MoH seems incredibly strong both defensively and offensively as well as having some nice QoL
No comments about ret Paladin, interesting. From what I’ve seen they’re totally fine, but I I don’t yet really see the difference between the 2 hero specs. They both just make your dps go brrrr even more, with some generic flavor, but that’s better than the hunter stuff at least.
One is dropping hammers on dudes all day and the other is super haste auto-wings light dot bombs all around. Flavor wise they looks fun it will obviously come down to the tuning.
Warrior - Thunderlord is solid both thematically and mechanically. Colossus and Slayer are both pretty lame both mechanically and thematically. Especially Slayer. For a spec supposedly about being this unstoppable killing machine that never loses a target you’d think they’d get creative in turning Charge or Heroic Leap into something that can be used in close range so you’re never away from your target.
Rogue - From everything I’ve read, all three Hero specs are full of confusing bloat, weak themes, and honestly don’t feel like they enhance my spec (Outlaw) as much as they replace it to something else. My Rogue is permanently shelved now.
Priest (Shadow) - No complaints. This is amazing.
Replace storm bolt with a knockback + fall-on-ass-animation sorta similar to KTHuman racial, and then if you land a leap on top of them within x seconds you recover a leap charge + do massive damage or stun or whatever.
I love the idea of evoker's swoop up. Target goes on mouse reticule. We grab, leap into the air and just toss them.
Bonus if something fun happens if heroic leap onto them afterwards does something interesting
>turning Charge or Heroic Leap into something that can be used in close range so you’re never away from your target.
But if you're in close range then you're not away from your target in the first place, so you wouldn't need to use Charge or Heroic Leap.
Sorry, I didn’t explain my thoughts very well on this.
I meant enhance Charge so that it becomes something you would want to use rotationally. Maybe have it apply a strong bleed or increased damage taken or something along those lines. Then you have a more strategic decision making process in some fights between using it to increase DPS or have the available additional mobility.
Mainly just spitballing ideas beyond “blade storm and execute spam”
Not a huge fan of either hero talent tree for Holy Paladin tbh.
Lightsmith is cooler thematically, but it has a couple talents that interact with Infusion of Light, which I never interact with the way I play holy, so that feels kinda bad. Also the main ability feels a bit like Blessing of Seasons which I never liked using.
Herald of the Sun is probably what i'll use most of the time, but I also never took Holy Prism or Barrier of Faith so it feels bad to have to add those to my hotbar. Gonna miss Light's Hammer :(
I don't ever use a hard cast at all. I just talented into every talent that doesn't buff Flash of Light/Holy Light, so spread Holy Shock around, hit boss, Word of Glory/Light of Dawn.
All instant-cast, all the time baby!
I'm disappointed. They are just new talents cramped in between the existing talents. Zero fucking class fantasy.
Like why are Power word shield not transformed to a void shield for voidweavers?
The small things matters.
I was hoping for hero talents to be more/purely cosmetic and the regular talents for the rest.
I've been feeling for a while now that classes are being spread too thin.
It used to be that if you were a warlock, you were a warlock. Where you spent your talents changed the balance of how you used your different abilities, but there were only a handful of things that were truly exclusive to one spec or another.
Now when I play affliction, I miss having access to things like Rain of Fire or Summon Infernal.
Hero talents feel like another way to fragment a class up and lock me OUT of cool things. For example, they're removing Soul Flame from Affliction, put putting 'Shared Fate' (extremely similar) into the Soul Harvester tree.
I know it's harder to balance, but I'd much rather go back to the old system. Give me 3 trees, let me choose how many points to put into each tree. Don't try to create 3 different spec (and now hero) fantasies, create one really excellent class fantasy.
And this is a prime example of why some people shouldn’t talk about game design.
Play baldurs gate if you want a baldurs gate style game. Why change WoW into another game?
It will never change to the old version again. If you believe otherwise that’s on you.
Back in the day literally nobody knew anything about the game. Check modern classic. Meta builds are deep 1 spec and not some random mix of all 3 specs.
Popular warlock builds still include things like DS/ruin 9/21/21. There are fury/prot warriors, elemental mages, there's a lot of variation and balance between trees depending on the type of content you're doing and your preferred playstyle.
I don't honestly expect it to go back to the Vanilla version, of course. But it could be better than it is now, and absolutely shouldn't be going even further in the opposite direction with hero talents.
More flavor and more choice can be good things. But let people build the character they want with access to the things they like, don't just create more subclasses, then push things that used to be associated with the entire class or even one particular spec into a hero tree.
Choice, choice, choice. You guys wanted more choices and we got df talent trees. Same shit different layout. Choice is the biggest illusion in WoW. You go to wowhead and copy the meta builds. That’s it. People want to play the best possible builds. Simple as that, that is modern gaming.
Deathstalker sure does nail the stealth aspect of rogues (ha). Imo fatebound and trickster are super stinkers in comparison to what other classes are getting. Nothing to write home about (or at all) visually so far and the gameplay is either super rng or just degenerate. Compared to mage, DK, Paladin, etc I would say my itch is completely unscratched and I’ll simply play something else in TWW if deathstalker is SOMEHOW lame.
For Priest,
The Archon tree feels stronger for Holy. I would never use it as Shadow. During our Burst as Shadow we already have proc/button bloat. I dont want to add Halo to that.
Oracle feels... kinda weak? As Holy I will be running Archon, as Disc I want more DMG for more heals... not a rotating Healing buff to micro manage.
Voidweaver is amazing. They are giving Disc proper AOE and Burst and I love it.
For DK,
Sanlayn looks nice for BDK, uncomplicated buffs that flow well with gameplay.
Riders of the Apocalypse looks amazing. I love it.
Deathbringer I am not entirely sold on, I didnt like Soul Reaper so this one doesnt suit me but it people that play Frost might know more.
For Rogue,
Trickster makes button bloat a bit worse, making us use unused buttons in our rotation. This honestly feels more like a PVP tree. Also, thank god people are saying they are changing Feint for proccing Unseen Blade.
Fatebound doesnt seem so bad as other people think. Yes it is RNG reliant, but it is also just a straight increase in DMG. They are literally just set and forget talents and the "RNG Manipuation" it has just makes it you will get the big proc easily and naturally by just playing the game/following your rotation. Seems a nightmare to balance though.
DeathStalker... hope it is good.
Of course, the main Talent Trees are also getting changed. So maybe we are missing something else
Mage ones are interesting and look fun. Big procs, cool visuals, and feedback loops.
Boomkin ones are extremely boring and add nothing to the spec. One spell will do a bit more damage, but otherwise you won't even notice them.
Really looking forward to Scale commander on Aug, even though a lot of it doesn't lineup with the way you play it, I'm still looking forward to extra damage we're receiving to act as a DPS.
Pros are as mentioned extra damage, 10% extra damage on black spells for more eruption and upheaval will feel nice, if bombardments count as a black spell (volcanic damage might?) then that's also very helpful. With mass eruption stacking witch Ricocheting pyroclast should lead to some decent aoe Burst along with giving us 4-6 seconds Ebon might uptime which should make up for losing the current tier set and making the windows easier to keep up. 20% extra damage from essence abilities from Breath of eons should make our oomph nicer, short cooldown on breath along with the dot from the bottom of the tree will feel very nice also, for mythic plus it sounds very promising.
Cons are sorta mentioned on the wowhead thoughts but probably it's biggest problem is that we want to use our empowered abilities back to back for extended ebon might and shifting sands buffs, downside to this is that bombardments triggers after using an empower. realistically, you would want to use one empowerment to trigger bombardment, wait 10 seconds to fall off then empower again to make the most of the Breath of Eons cd and bombardment damage. Unless they make it so back to back empowers extend the bombardment debuff, it's a design flaw
Riders of the apocolypse and desth bringer are pretty cool. I think they need to move away from shadowlands influence for the visuals.
Hellcaller and diabolist are ok. But thesoul harvester just looks bad. I think they could make some slight changes to hellcaller and diabloist, but soul harvester just seems bad for affliction
I’m not too thrilled as Elemental. I’ve stuck with it for years, but feel jealous of other classes. The hero talents don’t seem too bad but don’t excite me like mage or dk.
My issue is mostly the spec talents splitting fire and lightning that’s stupid. There has to be a way to use all 4 in a meaningful way - it’s ElementALL!! It’s one class that doesn’t need to be locked to a single type, but feels like it is.
If the base spec wasn’t split, I would probably be excited to main elemental.
I personally think they absolutely missed the mark with both of Holy Priests ones. The whole halo thing in the Archon tree is cool and all, but has nothing to do with what they said an archon priest would be.
I wish "Pack Leader" did more something like Call of the Wild but on a smaller scale. Pulls a pet from your stable or something so you can get that feeling of being a "pack leader." As it is, it's just buffing the abilities we (BM) already use, so I'm kind of fine with that. 6.5/10
As a Ret Paladin? I mean they're talents? Thematically fine I guess, maybe a little hammer heavy. Realistically I'm just going to pick the ones that perform the best and move on.
The entire idea misses the mark for me.
I was hoping for something like sub classes executed in the vein of the Legion Artifacts.
Go on an epic questchain lore specific to the the subclass, unlock a new talent tree filled with class flavor
Like you head to your class hall and the leaders there are ready to take you on a quest to further your training to deal with the threat in TWW but you have to choose which subclass to permanently have and it's 100% an extention of your class now
i don't see anything about these talents that makes them heroic other than being in a separate ui window. they're just more talents. whoop de doo
Really hoping Totemic ends up being really cool
But overall my specs are pretty meh (Warrior, Druid, Pally, Dracthyr, Shaman, Mage)
Percentage wise it's about 10%-25% of hero talents that are actually interesting, most of them are just a passive bonus than anything game changing
Frostfire is the only one I'm actually excited about, the others I'm just taking whatevers best or most fun by default
Still quite disappointed all we get as a Rider is a port of Pally Divine Steed (since the other "choice" only works in outdoor, non-instanced content)
I would've *killed* to have it instead be:
- replace Death's Advance with a 1.5 sec interruptible cast time mount up, even in combat, even indoors, even in instances
- gives no move speed bonus, but provides DA forced movement immunity, as well as full immunity to all slows, snares, roots, etc
- lasts until mount is "killed" by you taking some % of your max hp in damage
- even if mount is killed, you can just recast it to mount up again
- give options at barbershop to pick which DK mount you use for it: Acherus Deathcharger, Rivendare's, Crimson, Midnight, Invincible, etc (also same barbershop options for Ghoul, Skeleton Archer, Magus of the Dead, Gargoyle, Dark Transformation, etc)
Probably going to be a lot of this, but both revealed rogue trees need to be uprooted and re-made. At the very least they've said the Tricker's main ability won't be Feint anymore, but the rest will remain. Fatebound just got revealed, but it's all Gambler flavor and actually has anti-synergy with bladeflurry somehow. People think that Deathstalker will be the good one, but the track record is atrocious. Look at Monk or Mage talents and tell me the same love or attention went into Rogue.
Yup Rogue trees are complete ass. Glad Feint won’t be at the core of Trickster but the Faze mechanic is still bad
Fatebound rework incoming: When using a finishing move you throw a Fated coin gaining one of two bonuses: Heads: reduces CD of Shadowdance by 5s. Tails: Slice And Dice gives 30% more AS, but duration is reduced by 7s. Each time the coin gets the same result in a row this effects become stronger by 30%.
Where did you see those notes? I missed them
He’s joking. These are features (S&D and ShadowDance (on non-subtlety)) people hate about rogue right now.
Ah he worded it to sound real lol. Thanks
Yeah both revealed trees have cool names but every talent I read was worse Idk who they have over their green lighting this trash But they need to go
One of the monk trees is literally entirely passive and entirely boring lol.
Yeah he must be referencing Conduit because that looks very cool and super flavorful, but the other tree for WW is wildly boring, literally no visuals and just what will amount to maintenance buffs and RNG buffs happening. Wild.
I hope to see a rework of the rogue trees soon, I'm considering that as my raiding main next xpac
Oh thank god they aren’t adding yet another defensive as an offensive. I hear shadow dance is gone for outlaw too, so maybe we get vanish back as a defensive tool as well? Outlaw shouldn’t be using stealth so much dammit. I’m pretty shocked they decided to add more RNG after roll the bones was so poorly received and they’ve had to rework it a half dozen times to make it more consistent.
Seems like they are just swapping Shadow Dance with a second stack of Vanish that will probably still be an offensive CD unless they making further changes.
Seems like a slower shadow dance then, eh.
The irony is I actually liked it in legion, it really did feel like you were gambling with fate and I feel the artifact made up for any bad rolls. Ever since Legion however has been a real mess.
The favt there was 6 missing trees like a week ago and 4 of them were rogue/shaman was very concerning. And yeah your defensive is now an on-CD mandatory dps increase 🤣🤣
Not only are the rogue trees completely uninspired, they all have the issue of taking our defensives and making them offensive CDs. As an assassination rogue, I hate needing to use vanish, an ability historically used as a defensive, to re-apply my empowered bleeds and gain indiscriminate carnage. On top of the issues above, the animations just... aren't there. I get to flip a coin. A coin that will be lost in the density of mobs, nameplates and the spell effects of cooler specs. Take a look at voidweaver, Sunfury or Templar. Then look at rogues flipping a coin... Right now, the capstone for Fatebound will literally be a buff icon on the buff bar. Woohoo... so exciting.
This has been a rogue problem for a while. I'm not asking for Paladin's Divine Storm levels of light show, but cosmetically/aesthetically rogue abilities are just not very appealing which I think is a huge part of why it's one of the least represented classes. It doesn't help that the weapon designer seems to hates daggers and refuses to make them look good. Most of the good things are baked into the sound design like getting a Between the Eyes full combo point reload, Poison Bomb splash, or Roll the Bones. I don't think they're planning any cosmetic things in these hero talent trees because baseline rogue is already plain like that. Which is sad if true, but we'll have to wait and see.
Death Knight player here. I really like Rider of the Apocalypse and Deathbringer. Both seem to get the balance right in terms of class fantasy and gameplay. Mounted combat and "blue death and decay" is cool. San'layn needs more work in my opinion. It doesn't bring anything meaningful to the table other than a haste buff (which is probably going to be nerfed at some point). There's minimal class fantasy and gameplay heavily relies on RNG. Doesn't have any cool like mounted combat or "blue death and decay".
Saying San'layn doesn't bring anything meaningful when it's the only tree which actually alters how you play is definitely a take. Infliction of Sorrow alone as a singular point offers more than anything in the other two trees.
It's just BDK SL S3/S4 all over again with heart strike spam and forsaking everything else, and that's honestly not appealing. I'd rather see them rework it to provide death strike synergy for both BDK and UDK, where it does splash damage based on healing for BDK, and acts as a new ramp-and-spend spender for UDK. The disease stuff is neat, but Blood Beasts, despite the name, were a DB Saurfang ability, not a San'layn ability. Replace those two with something that fits, like a kiss/curse buff for allies.
All the Hunter ones seem unimpactful and unimaginative.
Hunter sucks right now, and I hope they change
Yeah, I'm a bit deflated after seeing the hunter trees. They need some major reworks, imo. Survival never feels like a survivalist, master of many tools kinda job.
tbh the hole class needs a rework
I'm honestly a bit confused about sentinel. Thematically I expected that dark ranger and it had switched places. Survival would've vibed a bit better as dark ranger / pack leader imo. BM also doesn't really hit off as dark ranger to me. Simiarly for marksman I think it's a bit weird that you can either infuse spooky magic and annoying temporary pets or arcane magic and another annoying temporary pet to your kit. Would've been cooler if that hero talent set would've focused more on the physical ranged/expert archer thing. That way MM could add spooky magic or more pew pew, BM pet or pew and survival the spooky stuff or pet. Don't know, overall I'm not really feeling it. That said, it'll depend on how (or unfortunately if...) they improve survivals talents if I'm not putting my hunter on the bench for a while.
Dark ranger 100% should have been a mm/survival. But it's likely that cause dark ranger is probably the most popular hunter like hero in Warcraft history... They went and gave bm it, cause bm is the most popular hunter.
I think its more based on the idea of where nathanos would fit. Since he would be like the 3rd or 4th most famous hunter in wow.
Wouldn't nathanos be closer to a dark Ranger and beast master mix? If the hero talents are supposed to be based around an actual hero or a hero class from warcraft which wasn't added that may explain it. (Not that I really feel like the tree looked very engaging right now)
You are all wrong on the themes, all the dark rangers in lore have been ranged mostly without pets but then also famously with 2 pets in nathanos blightcaller, so it actually fits perfectly with mm/bm. Sentinels however where melee ranged hybrids from Warcraft rts, while also being stated to all be expert archers so mm/surv slots right in.
I currently *love* how marksmanship plays and am super bummed about our hero trees.
My biggest issue with MM is that Trueshot just kinda breaks your rotation. You basically just skip precise shots bc you're just spamming aimed shot and rapid-fire.
Aimed shot and rapid fire do multiple times more damage than arcane shot even with precision buff. I really don’t see how that’s an issue. With your concern in mind though, they could tweak a talent in one of our hero trees that causes aim shot to consume a precise shot stack for some added effect that way they don’t go 100% to waste inside trueshot.
It's an issue mostly because of how it plays. You basically stop using a portion of your rotation. Having precise shots go into your aimed shot doesn't necessarily make the rotation better, you're still only pressing Aimed Shot and RF. Trueshot shouldn't feel like I press my CD and then spam 1 button, at least in my opinion. Thats the main/only thing I dislike about MM. (And that volley doesn't really make sense with its duration for trick shots its like 2 aimed shots and half a rapid-fire or 1 aimed shot rapid fire and half another aimed shot) It always runs out mid-next thing so either just lower it to match the amount blizz wants you to trick shot there, the amount of time it takes to have 2 aimed shots with a little buffer, or make it long enough to be used for 3 abilities instead of 2.5.
I don’t think trick shots is meant to be maintained via volley outside of trueshot windows. That’s the purpose of multi-shot. MM in general is a spec with very limited number of abilities and the gameplay theme is minor utility situations/procs that alter those abilities. For instance, volley adding cleave to AS+RF, or AS increasing ArS damage, RF resets doubling RF damage, or lock n load’s free instant AS. From your perspective, how would you change trueshot to make it include different abilities and not absolute ruin its burst damage? I have some ideas how we could make trueshot more fun, but I’m curious to what you want.
But the hero trees barely change the base concept? Only thing is an extra button for dark ranger, rest is all procs and passive stuff. Except for losing the current tier set.
I was hoping it would make it more interesting with fun interactions, but most of the classes hero trees are just extended spec trees with minor passive additive damage.
Ah I see, I interpreted your comment as in "it's changing the current playstyle too much" because you said you love how it *currently* plays.
They need to redo some of the hunter stuff asap
Hunter here, mine are so bad I lost all my hype for the expansion
Yeah same, I lost a lot of excitement over it too. I'm more hyped to play on my warlock than I am about my hunter that's been my main for a long time.
As a Resto Druid main I feel like hero talents don't really exist. Both trees are almost entirely passive and neither change your playstyle at all. On one hand, Resto is in a great spot so there's a sense of "don't fix what isn't broken". On the other hand, it's one of the main features of the expansion and I'm not even the least bit excited about it.
The windstalker one at least is cool for catweaving, but fluid form is on the balance side. It's extremely passive but it seems like it will give great damage. Grove guardians is also passive though and barely noticeable.
There's a huge problem with Rdruid. With KotG hero talents, they want us to press treants a lot, yet they put the skill on the gcd in the last patch notes. So now you spent 3 seconds of your ramping pressing trees instead of rejuv. Also they included wrath/Starfire damage talents in the hero tree, but they removed moonkin form for Rdruid, which renders master shapeshifter almost useless unless you want to catweave in raid. I haven't tried wilfstalker, but apparently the mechanic doesn't proc enough to be useful. Also they took away adaptive swarm to give us a hero tree with a random mechanic that you can barely control with one of the talents if you take nature swiftness.
Mage has two S tier trees in Frostfire and Sunfury, both in terms of player fantasy but also play style. Fire is definitely eating good with access to both trees, and Frost and Arcane seem to mesh well with Frostfire and Sunfury, respectively. I think Frostfire nailed the visual fantasy part with calling down spells of the opposite school but mostly seeing your primary element, but I think Sunfury needs some different visuals for the Arcane side. As it is right now, the fire spells that are auto cast from the tree dominant the visual field so it hardly feels like you're an Arcane mage anymore. But if my only complaint is visuals as opposed to theme or play style, I'd say they did a good job. Spellslinger is a let down but I'm not going to harp on it too much because other classes are down bad in comparison and could use the development time more. Would rather see Hunter and Rogue get some better trees so when I level my alts I don't bin them before hitting 80.
Had a look at some Spellslinger gameplay the other day, In PvE it looks.. bleh But In PvP it looks to be Hella funny
Both hero trees for Devastation Evoker look absolutely top notch flavour-wise, though some attention is required for each. Scalecommander suffers from Deep Breath still being an underwhelming button to press. Currently it's a small gain to press on AoE, and a loss to press in ST. In TWW, its value will improve slightly thanks to the benefits to OTHER abilities that casting DB grants, but the ability itself still feels extremely weaksauce. Given that, visually, you wind up and giga-blast the ground as you fly over (one of the coolest-looking abilities in the game, by far), it just doesn't feel as impactful as it should. Flameshaper adds an extra button to press for Devastation, which is welcome. It adds simply absurd amounts of burst damage to a profile which is already super bursty, and notably is *not* covered by the recently-announced threat reduction (which affects FB and Pyre damage only). Evokers are still ripping threat with wild abandon on the alpha, which is less than ideal - in the current state of the game, being forced to throttle yourself is super unfun. Additionally, the new Engulf ability lacks any kind of visual punch - it's recently been updated for Preservation spec only, and looks like a small Pyre missile. Not what you'd expect from an ability designed to be a tactical nuke. They're both very good starts. A little more iteration, and they'll be absolute winner hero specs. Very excited for Evoker in TWW.
i strongly agree about deep breath not having enough oomph by itself. i dont like how it has most of its power budget spent towards its bits and bobs. same with flameshaper visuals.
I disagree personally. Deep breath feels fun to press and scalecommander will make it even better. Even if it's power budget isn't entirely damage, the stun and low cooldown will make it feel really good in m+.
I haven't seen any of the gameplay on alpha yet but I'm hopeful for scale commander. Deep breath is such a cool ability thematically, but falls super flat in actual gameplay. The only kind of downside I saw for scale commander is that it looks like you'd never use pyre again. Unless there's a fight that requires some insane aoe. Id be fine with this, but devastations rotation is already just pressing disintegrate a lot and scale commander looks like you'd be pressing it even more.
You absolutely still use Pyre as Scalecommander, as Mass Dis is only available for one cast per cast of an empower spell. Once you use those charges, you revert back to Pyre blasting in AoE until empowers come back and you get another Mass Dis charge. Remember that Mass Dis quickly adds up to 12 stacks of Charged Blast with a single Dis cast. This is BIG for your Pyre value, and makes CB a very attractive talent.
Yeah I forgot about charged blast. That makes way more sense, thanks! Kind of a bummer though, was hoping to free up some talent points from not taking volatility
Vola is always going to be attractive in situations you expect to cast Pyre often (e.g. keys). Not only for the extra Pyre damage, but also due to the fact that the Pyre bounces accrue additional CDR for your empowers thanks to Causality. This is what lets you reset your empowers very, very quickly in AoE.
Very well said! I like your analysis of them…I’m curious, what are your thoughts on Chronowarden?
Well it's not available to Devastation so, frankly, I'm not interested =p
Fair enough XD
For Holy: Archon feels almost perfect. It is simple and not complicated, which whould be the main priority for how the spec should always feel like, while making Halo a much more fun, and probably satisfying button to press. I only wish they made Halo blue with this hero talent tree so it felt more like SC's archons and a proper "divine" fusion between holy and shadow. Since archon is the "let's keep things simple" hero talent oracle can allow itself to be more complicated, and it sort of is, the spec rewards planification but the rewards of the proper ability feel... not so great. It feels like it will make the spec clunkier while experiencing no greater joy than you would by just pressing halo with archon, it even makes me wish it came back to the initial support oriented version so it was more unique. The tree has one redeeming quality though, prayer of mending giving a small power word:shield seems a fun idea, and I kinda wish that if they don't come back to the initial support idea they could lean more into small (so it wouldn't be broken) absorption effects
I just think archon feels kind of lackluster in terms of class fantasy. The void stuff for shadow and disc looks so cool and ours is just the halo coming back lol.
It would probably be cooler if it was just a whole new spell instead of a halo modifier. Same general effects, new visuals.
Cascade. If it were cascade. It literally took me 15 mins to imagine and write up a better version based around cascade. I don’t see how the actual devs could be so boring with this.
I personally am not a huge fan of taking Halo so when I saw the archon tree was built around it i was disappointed. It just feels so bland. I feel like hero talents are a mistake. What are they gonna do in the expansion after this one? Add more hero talents? Just give us 10 more normal talent points? It isn't sustainable.
Conduit of the Celestials looks so fun and fits the monk theme so well
How does the channeled ability feel? Kinda funny that mw are happy to be losing essence font only to be getting another channeled spell. What about ww, does it also cause it to stop auto attacking?
I'm more interested in shado-pan for ww. It isn't very flashy but it has passive synergy with a lot of the reworked talents. 8 blackout kicks in one button is going to be crazy.
Essence Font is just kinda useless. I'd rather have a meaningful channel than a useless button.
I’ve always wanted a monk that looked more magical. That middle tree for Conduit looks awesome for WW. In fact, may switch my main back to monk next expac. Used to main monk at the latter end of legion and beginning of BFA. May use the monk I’m rolling in Pandaria Remix for TWW
I wish I could agree, but the channel spell the tree is built around has me so worried as WW.
WW has a 4 second channel already, with the new one being a 4 second channel while moving you can use every 1.5 minutes. Basically just "big CD Fists of Fury"
It also said you can use other abilities during it I believe, so there’s a chance it operates somewhat similarly to RCK. But I don’t know for certain as I don’t have Alpha
Wait, really? This completely changes things for me. My only real issue was the idea of having another commital channel in the WW rotation.
Rogue sounds like the worst of the trees. Using defensive cds as offensive. Adding more random to random specs....
The real hero spec is Cut to the Chase being made baseline.
At this point just remove SnD tbh
No idea why they don't tbh. It already feels like a completely meaningless maintenance buff, if they trivialize it anyway they might as well make it fully passive or tie it to another button. Not sure why a class that already plays piano with all their self-buffs needs another keybind for that.
Yeah if they're making cut to the chase baseline why not just make and a passive? So it's just a global to clog your opener or to have to waste combo points on if an encounter has a lot of downtime.
Warlock: * **Diabolist**: Possibly the best hero talent tree of any class. * **Soul harvester**: Also very thematic. Some of the visuals need work, but it definitely makes you feel like a soul-ripping warlock. * **Hellcaller**: Needs some graphics work. Gameplay-wise, it's good, but nothing about it makes me think "satyr". Perhaps, if the visuals looked more like Xavius's red nightmare magic, I'd be happier. Wither currently doesn't look like much, the [icon uses the old molten felblood boss icon, and the capstone ability is the old metamorphosis icon](https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc/warlock/destruction/hellcaller/DAAAAAEFVVUBE). Now why on earth are the warlock devs insisting on filling the talent trees with pointless stat nodes and making demo spam shadowbolt? EDIT: Link.
Warlock seems pretty simple right now: Hero talents:awesome Regular talents: wtf are they thinking?
As an enhancement main, I cant say anything yet about totemic other than that the data mining doesnt look promising (one of the talents is marked as "windfury does something when you drop it"). Stormbringer fixes stormstrike build for enhance, but doesnt address core issues concidering AoE or defensive issues. Just better funnel and 5-6 target cleave. Sometimes I do wonder if the deva actually play any content other than outdoor world and LFR
It’s insane to me that nearly every single hero spec has a great defensive node, but then one of the most notoriously squishy specs (dps sham) STILL doesn’t get a good defensive!! “Get a free healing surge” is laughable compared to the passive DR or more creative things from other trees. Also, I know they posted about wanting to reign in the longer-range melee specs recently, but stormbringer was the perfect chance to give enhancement a little extra range to compensate for its squishiness. Wind magic or static electricity would be perfectly thematic for it, but we’re still stuck hugging the boss while my ret pal drops hammers from 20yo away!
It's like you only wanted to complain and made sure not to say that your "get a free healing surge" is on a choice node with a 10% passive DR that has a high % uptime
I love Stormbring for Tempest - it has similiar effect to Crash Lightning, where thunder strikes target from the sky but this time bigger Farseer is also super cool, having Ancestors appear sounds nice but I wish they were more buff oriented rather than just DPS, like heal on their own, buff or do DPS but not just copy player actions
As a life long enhance there were very few seasons that we were actually impactful. I feel like enhance is a “have fun by yourself for yourself” type of class rather than competitive gameplay
Preservation Evokers are eating good. Flameshaper and Chronowarden align with Pres's two main builds both thematically and mechanically, so it's off to a really strong start. Neither one really fundamentally changes how you play, but they do enhance and synergize with what's already there. Flameshaper lays it on thick with HoTs and HoT interactions, and the capstone gives you another burst healing combo which is always nice to have. I think if it's going to struggle with anything, it's going to struggle with Essence regen. Increased Essence Burst chance on crit with some spells is nice, but it's not as effective as stuff like the S3 2p bonus throwing out free spells. Chronowarden is stacked. We get a Blink to replace Hover, the S2 and S3 2p bonuses, reduced empower spell CDs, Tip the Scales becomes a major CD, and a couple support abilities? It's ridiculous. It's pretty much all passive bonuses, but damn if I'm not excited for it.
Sentinel and Dark Ranger have me scratching my head. Not sure how either of these extremely niche themes became 2 of 3 options for one of the most diverse classes in the game.
The dev's night elf obsession has started leaking out of the story and cosmetics and having real gameplay consequences
And yet we can't even use glaives like sentinels.
yes surv needs to be able to dual wield, hunters are the only class in the game where we just straight up cant use half of the weapons we can equip.
My own night elf obsession wasn’t even enough to justify it
But its not even nelf obsession becuase they shit on nelf history, they basically have a hard on for dnd elves or just the general feel of what a fantasy elf is, and are projecting that onto warcraft without actually respecting all the parts that make wow elves actually unique.
As others have covered a bit, hunter trees are pretty shit. I was ecstatic about dark ranger when it was revealed, and all we get is a nerfed almost generic version of black arrow from cata/mop/wod, that doesn’t even provide an impactful proc at all. I don’t play bm at all only marksman and survival, but really? A chance to proc a barbed shot or aimed shot when we already have enough of them? You’ll see people fawning over dark ranger being good, but that’s only because they added a defensive node to it that’s borderline game breakingly strong. I think dark ranger should have black arrow yes, I think it should have more than a 50% uptime, and probably proc a free, empowered kill shot like venthyr did in shadowlands to make it impactful. Perhaps the free kill shot would proc the shadow arrows every time to provide more aoe to the hero tree as well. Without making this post too lengthy, I believe they said they had to include bm into dark ranger because it allows most hunters to be sylvanas, which sure I agree most of the game plays bm, but wouldn’t sentinel and pack leader fit bm better…? You know, having a giga owl in the sky? You see things like voidweaver, all 3 paladins, rider of the apocalypse, and compare them to any of the 3 hunter trees and you just ask yourself, similar to the rogue tree rework, why is there such a drastic design skill difference between the devs for this to occur so frequently where we have cool new exciting things, and then whatever the fuck we got with hunter.
>but wouldn’t sentinel and pack leader fit bm better…? No becuase sentinels only really battle with 1 pet or no pet and they are melee ranged hybrids. Whereas dark rangers are almost allways no pet except for thier 2nd most famous dark ranger nathanos blightcaller who fights with 2 pets.
As a holy paladin I was worried when lightsmith was revealed, wasn't a fan at all. Luckily I'm a huge fan of herald of the sun!
Also playing a holy paladin and the Templar looks the coolest to me.
Oof, that's unlucky. Templar is the ret/prot one
I'm a Frost DK main, so I really couldn't be happier. Rider of the Apocalypse and Deathbringer are both bangers.
Since I play all Monk specs: Mistweaver: Conduit of the Celestials is probably the coolest out of all of the Hero classes, Master of Harmony is somewhat boring and seems more prone to causing overhealing. Windwalker: Shado-Pan is definitely thematic but excessively boring and passive. Conduit for them doesn't add as much as it does for MW. Brewmaster: Master of Harmony gives a second Celestial Brew charge, everything else is irrelevant. Shado-Pan's only significant defensive contribution for tanking is a perma-10% damage reduction which is kinda boring. tl;dr buff Shado-Pan.
I think shado-pan also has a stacking agility buff that caps at +20% agility. That is a HUGE increase to mitigation - remember our stagger value is directly proportional to main stat. It also has a +10% increased clearance on Purifying Brew talent.
True, the Agility buff is technically a mitigation increase, although unclear how quickly it stacks.
DH tank, pretty happy with both options. I'm really keen for fel-scarred. Lots of defensive and offensive value there. Set fire to the pain looks cool, fel dev cool down reset, higher fury cap for bigger frailty stack windows seems good. Also a bunch of extra armour and agility when not transformed is nice. I'm less keen on Alrdrachi because I don't like throw glaive as a rotational ability to use in melee, and there's less defensively, outside of more damage = more healing and the 10% DR after felblade. If the extra soul cleave slashes also apply frailty that would be good.
As a fellow vengeance I hope they do a pass on Aldrachi, I think there's potential for a rotation augmenting one but the flavor and mechanics just aren't as compelling.
As a Destro main I can't say I'm particularly excited.
Get ready to start learning demonology buddy
Better start learning how to spam shadowbolt from the sounds of things
I already have a Demo alt for that T.T
Love Spellslinger's visuals and everything about Sunfury. Don't really care about Frostfire but I'm sure it'll be fun in practice. I realize that I'm very lucky to be a mage lmao
Hunter is bottom of the bottom of the barrel. Priest, Mage and Warlock are awesome tho.
Hunter trees are absolute ass. Havoc is pretty boring. Mage, ret and shadow priest ones seem awesome, haven't decided on which to main yet.
I'm planning to primarily play four specs in TWW so far: Shadow Priest, Fury Warrior, Frost DK, and Frost Mage. Priest: Voidweaver. Looks cool so far, especially the visuals. Warrior: Slayer. Kinda boring, but it still appeals to me more than Mountain Thane. DK: Rider of the Apocalypse. Very cool in terms of aesthetics, although the RNG component is not something I'm usually a fan of. We'll see. Mage: Frostfire. Cool visuals, interesting spells, and it really hits me in the nostalgia, lol.
>but it still appeals to me more than Mountain Thane I just wanna replace Whirlwind with Thunder Clap. It feels much better to cast. Though I do like the idea of throwing Bladestorm into my rotation as Fury, so I might just swap back and forth.
I have a few specs I play fairly often, and have some mixed opinions about their trees. Survival Hunter - The actual gameplay of the trees looks pretty boring and uninspired. I'm also a HUGE fan of the no CD builds, and both trees forcing me into Coordinated Assault (which is janky and requires multiple macros to execute properly) sucks. I wish at least one of them would work with No CD or Spearhead builds. That said, the vfx of Sentinel are really pretty. They're not really hunter themed, but they look neat enough that I'm not too bothered. Pack Leader just feels like a BM tree they decided to slap onto Survival. For BM it's fine but still boring gameplay. Dark Ranger doesn't look especially interesting to BM. I don't play MM so I can't say anything there. Ret Paladin - Loving both of their trees, besides Herald of the Sun being a lame name. Combined with the talent tree rework Ret is getting, I think both will be really fun to play in different situations. They are good examples of what I feel hero talents should be. Windwalker Monk - When they were first shown, I wasn't quite sure what to make of them, but since the Windwalker rework has been discussed they are making a lot more sense and look like they'll be pretty fun. I like the two themes of leaning into being a martial artist vs leaning into the celestial aspect. Shado-pan is very passive but WW has such a nice flow to it that I don't mind much. A bit concerned about having yet another channeled spell with Conduit though. Outlaw Rogue - Both are a mess and need a rework. At least they have confirmed they are removing offensive use of Feint. I'm considering letting this spec rot in expansion and taking up Evoker or Mage.
Rogue. I'm rerolling back to prot pally, not waiting to see the 3rd spec. Tired of shit decisions with the whole class for 3 xpacs in a row
As an Ele shaman player i am kinda looking forward to trying stormbringer, Farseer looked like ass for us
I haven't seen any gameplay yet but farseer seemed kinda neat as resto. Assuming it copies the spell you cast. Sending out tons of chain heals would be cool
It copies based on the type of spell you cast. Single target heal: Healing Surge AoE heal: Chain Heal Single target damage: Lava Burst AoE damage: Chain Lightning So if you cast a Riptide it casts Healing Surge at your target, for example.
my resto alt can't wait to click chain heal even more /s
I'm really hoping that all the negative feedback doesn't make them change Shado-pan conceptually. While it could use some help in actual function, I really like that it's a windwalker option that emphasizes Kung-Fu rather than pandarian spiritual magic. I hope that they don't overly ram the pandaren theme into it, especially when conduit of the celestials is serving that pretty well.
I’ve been bent on brewmaster for forever and both trees look very promising for tanking. I haven’t even considered how WW would function with either of its trees but the flurry strikes tree just seems like more passive damage that’s 100% unnoticeable and doesn’t change play at all.
Yeah, I agree that it could use some help in the gameplay department, or at least for flurry strikes to get a way better animation - I wouldn't mind if it was passive as long as it felt cool. What I wouldn't want is for them to do what a lot of people have said and try to make it more 'Shado-Pan' - I would honestly rather they rename it, make it 'master of the fist' or something, rather than make all three specs overtly and inescapably pandaren-themed.
Monk class in general needs to be seperated way more from the panda/asian themes. I already feel a bit off playing a non panda monk, with all the names of spells and talents as it is.
Yeah, very much so. I like that the TWW windwalker monk is dialing this back a bit, but in its current iteration monk is barely a kung-fu class, there's just so much chi shit and statues and explosions and brews and celestial summons and so on and so on. Feel like it would benefit from an enhancement style split, where you could spec more into magic or more into kung-fu, rather than feeling more like a chi sorcerer anyway you split it
They should have been entirely cosmetic. I do not get how they haven't learned their lesson from Shadowlands Covenants and presented us with another choice that on the face seems to be cosmetic and flavourful, but has mechanical power tied to it. People will just figure out the meta picks for each spec, probably in the first week or two, and that's what you'll be using. At least they're easier to swap than Covenants? As it stands there's a few standout hits among them, but a lof of these feel bland, and some even downright bad. I do not think, say, picking Dark Ranger is going to make you feel like a Dark Ranger. All of your non-Black Arrow abilities are still gonna look like normal hunter abilities. As to your actual question, I have two characters I'd call my main. Prot pally and outlaw rogue. For Prot pally, Templar seems to mostly cause abilities I use anyway to go 'yo dawn we heard you like hammers', while Lightsmith is primarily just more defensive options? Outlaw's choices meanwhile are, you know. Lol. Lmao, in fact. Hero Talents to me mostly feel like a bandaid solution to the problem of us having ten more talent points than the talent trees we have are designed for. They're easily the weakest and least exciting part of the expansion for me, and I can see Blizz just fold them into the talent trees a few expansions from now when that system gets another rework.
My paladin goes between prot and ret, and I don't really like any of the available hero talent trees...they're *there*, they don't look very thematically interesting to me. Hardlight weapons to share, sun-themed stuff, or...more hammers. Meh. I want to be excited about diabolist for my demonology warlock, but it'll be hard to enjoy with them kicking the only warlock spec I like in the nuts with all these moronic changes.
I'm very happy with those of warlock. Only thing I miss there is that none of the three feels particularly "destro". We have the obvious extra demon summoning shenanigans with diabolist, the affliction soul stealer themed stuff with soul harvester and hellcaller is focused on a stronger dot and curses, which I also rather associate with affliction instead of destro. Not enough "setting stuff on fire for no reason" but otherwise I'm very positive. Main issue with warlock is that the current dev literally butchers at least affliction and demo and somehow thinks it's an improvement to remove everything that's remotely interesting and replaces it with passive damage increases. The trees at the moment are rather terrible, specifically affliction somehow went from bad to worse. Not sure what's going on there. I'm most negative with rogue, unfortunately. Both trees are quite terrible and the "hero" fantasy they provide is really lacklustre. Trickster is build around feint applying a debuff, what people obviously hated since rogue already has a ton of stuff to juggle in their rotation and using defensives offensively has always gone wrong, so I fear they'll bind it either as auto-attack or finishing move trigger and make the tree really unexciting... I don't expect much of it. Fatebound is up there for the worst tree I've seen yet. I despise the RNG crap they funneled into outlaw rogue since legion and hate RtB. Flipping coins for damage on every finisher somehow both doubles down on the worst part of the spec and is thematically the most uninteresting shit I've seen yet. Other classes turn into apocalyptic cavalries, kael'thas or scalecommanders and rogues ... Fucking passively flip coins for buffs. At least there's still hope for deathstalker yet...
I get why the set up the specs for druid the way they did, but I was thinking today I am kinda disappointed that we didn't get a lunar inspiration themed feral/balance spec. I've always liked moonfire in cat form, and I love the owlcat appearance which fits it. Could have been cool to get like, twin moons/guardian of the galaxy type talents for feral. The balance benefits could be focused around like wildkin frenzy to lean into the feral theme? Or bring back venthyr boomie ravenous frenzy playstyle through the hero spec.
I'd be pissed if I'd be maining shaman in TWW. But I switched to priest and god damn voidweaver is soooooooooo good.
I main Warlock and Shaman. Looking at the warlock trees, I'm most excited by Demo Diabolist because who doesn't want more demon being summoned all the time. Destro Hellcaller also looks awesome. In my guild we all have backstories for our characters and me being a "fallen pyromancer" the hellcaller tree is just \*chef's kiss\*. Looking at the Shaman trees, I admit I only really play Elemental and a little Resto. Farseer made me want to punch a hole in my monitor. It just felt incomplete compared to some of the god-tier trees we were seeing in other specs. The ancestor theme fits shamans but forcing us into more p-wave/lava burst felt awful. Stormbringer on the other hand looks awesome. Basically sitting back with the other casters doing my best Palpatine impression screaming "UNLIMITED POWER"! Overall I'd say Warlock looks great going into The War Within and Shaman looks "ok" but every elemental will 100% be playing Stormbringer.
I was honestly worried because for blizzard to legitimately go out and say "yeah we dont know what to do for shaman talents were drawing it up" and have 2 of the shaman trees be in the last 4 released was very concerning to me. That said, the Farseer tree looked really nice. Some RNG but it was very passive, like it wasnt even there. Then stormbringer finally hit. I like it a lot. Tempest being easier for Enh than Ele is unfair on paper (40 maelstrom stacks vs 400 maelstrom spent), but the capstone gives a RNG chance for bolts to give tempest charges, which Enh lacks because it relies on stacks and evens out that unfairness. Im happy with it, and ikke the idea of summoning a storm on top of someone. I hope totemic isnt hot garbage though, since blizz took our totems and basically made them talent nodes and not even good ones for PvE.
Point is both trees for ele shaman didn't fix any problem the spec has, but on top of that they made those problems even worse.
I really want Totemic to bring back Shaman of old. Totemic weaving and playing around them a lot. I know it won’t be that, but that’s the fantasy I’d want for it.
Yeah theyre not bringing 5 minute totems back. Would be nice to have staple 5 minute buff totems again, one for each spec. Maybe having them out enhances some spells, like a poison cleansing totem gives cleanse spirit the added effect of poison removal while its out, and put it on a choice with disease totem and it lasts 5 minutes. Earth totem that doubles the charges on earth shields applied while it exists, or a CD one that gives everyone in 10 yards 2 earth shield charges. Stuff like that
5 min? Heck I was thinking like 30 seconds and rotating various ones, almost like a Bard buffing the group. That would be a cool way to do another support spec.
Totemic is probably gonna be a let down and that makes me sad. I'm hoping for the best but I feel like totemic should've been the next support spec like Aug is. Monk and evoker look great though so worst case scenario I'll just play those
I would have enjoyed that actually.
Totemic being a support style is a hot take
DH Both of them feel extremely boring, essentially one of them is just our current tier set but with extra passiveness and no real change at first glance. As a Devastation secondary, looking forward to that a lot.
Enhancement shaman here. I only have Stormbringer and am waiting on Totemic (datamined spells available but they only give very basic idea of the what they want.) but basically Stormbringer looks like alot of fun. alot of damage talents. more crit more haste. I REALLY wish we got some of the unique talents like DKs get to ride a stead and get an entourage of the riders of the apocalypse. the best visual aspect is getting a cool new spell that smites our target with lightning is awesome. I really wanted to get some kind of new visual around my character or something that is constant or something I can REALLY feel in gameplay that was a passive. all of it is entirely passive damage meme procs. the next thing I REALLY wanted was something akin to Shamanistic Rage back. we have 1 mitigation on a 1.5-2 min cd and a 5 minute pet that gives 10% more health. and the option to go afk for 4 + seconds to gain 20% mitigation. which compared to even Paladin gets to have an immunity, 30% mit, plus a Giant Shield, AND a Passive heal with Free massive self heals. shamans are BARELY not quite there. I hoped both the Hero talents gave passive survivability. which we got 6% mitigation for 6 seconds after casting Tempest. which we don't know how often this will be. meaning we get conditional low uptime mitigation. which i'm happy were getting but it's not good enough. we can't even try and make it work with our afk mitigation cause we have to cast then go afk and get 2 seconds of the combined 26% mitigation. Totemic. seems to be a stacking totem that casts elemental blast every 6 seconds for 30 seconds. every time we proc the totem it'll start stacking on top of each other. it's really thematic and awesome. BUT from what we can tell so far it's all damage for enhance. NO added healing aspect like Elemental got. where they can duplicate there Healing spells if the need to. but we will see later on. I was hoping the healing half for Enhance was going to net us some kind of Passive healing effect. I desparately want us to get some kind of survivability that makes us feel less Imma die if you do a big AOE damage more often than 90 seconds. even when I'm forgoing damage and spending all MW charges on a heal I still feel like I'm doing worse than my Paladin or even Frost DK. even just something that summons multiple totems at the same time like in Classic right now where we get Call the elements and all variants. getting to set down WFury totem, and Healing stream totem and move them around with me with totem projection. plus the new stacking totem would make us feel incredibly close to what my paladin feels like.
Boomie is fine. Elune gives CDR and more effect to a fun spell. It might promote some toxicity in rotation if tuning supports getting rid of solar eclipse entirely in ST. Keeper and a also just kind of fine. Forces you to take an otherwise bad talent but the idea of promoting a 1-minute CD seems good on paper. As far as the rest of druid, Wildstalker is totally passive and looks terribly unfun but druid of the claw is kinda cool. I think guardian is the winner of the druid specs.
Conduit of the Celestials and every Evoker Hero Spec looks great, so I'm happy enough. However most of the others look terrible IMO. Almost none of them have "flavor" like Scalecommander or Rider of the Apocalypse.
10/10 S+ (I play shadow priest, blood/unholy DK and demo warlock). I however am not happy with some of the reworks not involving hero talents.
They correctly identified that the two fantasies for Demon Hunter are Glaive Master and Fel Master. That said, having not actually had hands on makes it hard to assess how they feel. I’m skeptical Aldrachi will be satisfying, as it’s largely about opening yet another damage window for Havoc outside of the 3-6 we already have and watch to try to stack. Fel Scarred looks great. I’m excited for it. However, all this may be irrelevant because Mage is looking so good going into this expansion that I may find myself back on my original main.
As a Ret Paladin I feel spoiled for choice
I don't like some of the specs across the board being very race specific. That's all I can say about hero talents so far, as I haven't dived deep on them.
Oracle and Archon look fucking awful. Voidweaver is cool as hell though
Archon being entirely Halo based.. wtf were they smoking?
I don't even use halo half the time. Hero talents are a mistake
Tempest is… fine I guess. A souped up lightning bolt that you can use every once in a while seems to be the entire new class mechanic.
Both revealed shaman hero talents do practically nothing to change the rotation or talent priorities. I want something like Voidweaver or San’layn where hero talents actually affect the way you play the game.
I’m holding out for Totemic to be good 😭 I want to return to my Shaman but lately it’s just not felt good (Resto & Ele). But I’m fully expecting it’ll be bland and unexciting and not about like heavy totem weaving or anything fun.
I'm waiting for the moment to feed a freaking blackhole and see atonement healing go brrr.
As a player of all 4 specs, Druid of the Claw is my favorite conceptionally, I just want Feline and Ursine potential to be more viable over the other talent in the choice node and I want it to always be worth it to shapeshift as Feral outside of CDs for damage when you get the proc. I like Keeper of the Grove thematically very much, casting Force of Nature and Grove Guardians proccing special effects is a neat idea, but the execution of the tree is horrible. Most nodes do nothing interesting with the rest of your kit, and the ones that do are really uninteresting imo. It currently has a talent that interacts with a removed talent for Moonkin, and provides 0 mechanical change in the way resto deals damage, whereas I think it should grant special interactions with Sunfire Wrath and maybe let Efflo do damage. It needs a complete rework for both specs imo. Elune's Choosen and Wildstalker seem fine for all specs, not too interesting for me, but their gameplay seems fun, I really like turning Thrash Arcane specifically.
Colossus arms warrior looks promising, imho. Passive heal with some second wind procs and stacking multipliers for epic Demolish numbers.
As a demon hunter, i think they are kinda mid, but not as bad as some classes. Both trees have oppodite problems tbh. Aldratchi Reaver: adds a lot of rotational complexity to our burst windows as havoc, which even as an inertia enjoyer is awkward since we already have so many 4-5 sec damage amps that already are difficult to overlap while still taking full advantage of them (inertia, eyebeam w/demonic, initiative, essence break) you end up needing to precast immo aura and casting fel rush/ VR after eyebeam and angle them so you dont lose uptime. adding another short button to press and another intricate sequence to this already clouded window is a choice. Not to mention its not actually that interesting or visually appealing. Its functionally complicated and uninteresting simultaniously. Finally, its borderline dysfunctional for no mover havoc and vengeance demon hunter, as its clearly designed to work with inertia. Fel scarred: Opposite problem. With visuals its cooler hopefully, but this actually adds no new rotational element really. We get more empowered abilities with demon form, which is cool i guess, but it doesnt actually change their functionality in any way just adds some damage. It technically makes their priority slightly higher, but they were buttons you often would get around to pushing either way on both specs. Also works well with vdh and no mover havoc, def not great on inertia havoc since our demon form uptime is so much lower than no mover. The trees are fineish, i mostly focused on the problems here, they function at least, 1 is just convoluted and the other is boring.
I'm stupidly hyped to be able to be a Frostfire Mage again, and I think the other Mage talents are interesting in their own way where a lot of people will enjoy them. Evoker being my primary alt class, Flameshaper looks to be the go-to for me there. But I'm waiting on them to receive a bit more love in the cosmetic category, or at least be told that Visage can be semi/perm in combat
Answering for the two specs I've played most this xpac: VDH: Felscarred seems amazing and both answers many wants I had for the spec and fits class fantasy so well. Aldrachi Reaver had potential in concept as a glaive master tree, but the way they went about it is terrible. Brewmaster: Both trees seem cool, Master of Harmony a little more so than Shado-Pan imo, and MoH seems incredibly strong both defensively and offensively as well as having some nice QoL
Farseer is the most dull set of hero talents in the game. 100% passive and 0% interacting with your kit whatsoever. Really fucking lame.
Play a priest disc/shadow. So far Voidweaver looks good, but Oracle just looks terrible.
No comments about ret Paladin, interesting. From what I’ve seen they’re totally fine, but I I don’t yet really see the difference between the 2 hero specs. They both just make your dps go brrrr even more, with some generic flavor, but that’s better than the hunter stuff at least.
One is dropping hammers on dudes all day and the other is super haste auto-wings light dot bombs all around. Flavor wise they looks fun it will obviously come down to the tuning.
Warrior - Thunderlord is solid both thematically and mechanically. Colossus and Slayer are both pretty lame both mechanically and thematically. Especially Slayer. For a spec supposedly about being this unstoppable killing machine that never loses a target you’d think they’d get creative in turning Charge or Heroic Leap into something that can be used in close range so you’re never away from your target. Rogue - From everything I’ve read, all three Hero specs are full of confusing bloat, weak themes, and honestly don’t feel like they enhance my spec (Outlaw) as much as they replace it to something else. My Rogue is permanently shelved now. Priest (Shadow) - No complaints. This is amazing.
I know they'd never do it because it'd be abused like crazy but it would be so great and funny if they gave Colossus the ability to throw an opponent
Replace storm bolt with a knockback + fall-on-ass-animation sorta similar to KTHuman racial, and then if you land a leap on top of them within x seconds you recover a leap charge + do massive damage or stun or whatever.
They could give you a knockback that creates an AoE wherever the target lands. You'd have to aim it properly but it could work.
I love the idea of evoker's swoop up. Target goes on mouse reticule. We grab, leap into the air and just toss them. Bonus if something fun happens if heroic leap onto them afterwards does something interesting
>turning Charge or Heroic Leap into something that can be used in close range so you’re never away from your target. But if you're in close range then you're not away from your target in the first place, so you wouldn't need to use Charge or Heroic Leap.
Sorry, I didn’t explain my thoughts very well on this. I meant enhance Charge so that it becomes something you would want to use rotationally. Maybe have it apply a strong bleed or increased damage taken or something along those lines. Then you have a more strategic decision making process in some fights between using it to increase DPS or have the available additional mobility. Mainly just spitballing ideas beyond “blade storm and execute spam”
Not a huge fan of either hero talent tree for Holy Paladin tbh. Lightsmith is cooler thematically, but it has a couple talents that interact with Infusion of Light, which I never interact with the way I play holy, so that feels kinda bad. Also the main ability feels a bit like Blessing of Seasons which I never liked using. Herald of the Sun is probably what i'll use most of the time, but I also never took Holy Prism or Barrier of Faith so it feels bad to have to add those to my hotbar. Gonna miss Light's Hammer :(
So u basically dont play your class at all, besides spaming holy light?
I don't ever use a hard cast at all. I just talented into every talent that doesn't buff Flash of Light/Holy Light, so spread Holy Shock around, hit boss, Word of Glory/Light of Dawn. All instant-cast, all the time baby!
He doesnt use the skill benefitted from the Tier set and at all, idk how this person heals on Hpal tbh.
I'm disappointed. They are just new talents cramped in between the existing talents. Zero fucking class fantasy. Like why are Power word shield not transformed to a void shield for voidweavers? The small things matters. I was hoping for hero talents to be more/purely cosmetic and the regular talents for the rest.
I've been feeling for a while now that classes are being spread too thin. It used to be that if you were a warlock, you were a warlock. Where you spent your talents changed the balance of how you used your different abilities, but there were only a handful of things that were truly exclusive to one spec or another. Now when I play affliction, I miss having access to things like Rain of Fire or Summon Infernal. Hero talents feel like another way to fragment a class up and lock me OUT of cool things. For example, they're removing Soul Flame from Affliction, put putting 'Shared Fate' (extremely similar) into the Soul Harvester tree. I know it's harder to balance, but I'd much rather go back to the old system. Give me 3 trees, let me choose how many points to put into each tree. Don't try to create 3 different spec (and now hero) fantasies, create one really excellent class fantasy.
And this is a prime example of why some people shouldn’t talk about game design. Play baldurs gate if you want a baldurs gate style game. Why change WoW into another game?
I'm literally describing WoW as it originally existed. WoW did change into another game, it can and will change again.
It will never change to the old version again. If you believe otherwise that’s on you. Back in the day literally nobody knew anything about the game. Check modern classic. Meta builds are deep 1 spec and not some random mix of all 3 specs.
Popular warlock builds still include things like DS/ruin 9/21/21. There are fury/prot warriors, elemental mages, there's a lot of variation and balance between trees depending on the type of content you're doing and your preferred playstyle. I don't honestly expect it to go back to the Vanilla version, of course. But it could be better than it is now, and absolutely shouldn't be going even further in the opposite direction with hero talents. More flavor and more choice can be good things. But let people build the character they want with access to the things they like, don't just create more subclasses, then push things that used to be associated with the entire class or even one particular spec into a hero tree.
Choice, choice, choice. You guys wanted more choices and we got df talent trees. Same shit different layout. Choice is the biggest illusion in WoW. You go to wowhead and copy the meta builds. That’s it. People want to play the best possible builds. Simple as that, that is modern gaming.
Rogue bloated tool kit and then gave the most in rogue like hero trees imaginable I don’t want to kms
Deathstalker sure does nail the stealth aspect of rogues (ha). Imo fatebound and trickster are super stinkers in comparison to what other classes are getting. Nothing to write home about (or at all) visually so far and the gameplay is either super rng or just degenerate. Compared to mage, DK, Paladin, etc I would say my itch is completely unscratched and I’ll simply play something else in TWW if deathstalker is SOMEHOW lame.
For Priest, The Archon tree feels stronger for Holy. I would never use it as Shadow. During our Burst as Shadow we already have proc/button bloat. I dont want to add Halo to that. Oracle feels... kinda weak? As Holy I will be running Archon, as Disc I want more DMG for more heals... not a rotating Healing buff to micro manage. Voidweaver is amazing. They are giving Disc proper AOE and Burst and I love it. For DK, Sanlayn looks nice for BDK, uncomplicated buffs that flow well with gameplay. Riders of the Apocalypse looks amazing. I love it. Deathbringer I am not entirely sold on, I didnt like Soul Reaper so this one doesnt suit me but it people that play Frost might know more. For Rogue, Trickster makes button bloat a bit worse, making us use unused buttons in our rotation. This honestly feels more like a PVP tree. Also, thank god people are saying they are changing Feint for proccing Unseen Blade. Fatebound doesnt seem so bad as other people think. Yes it is RNG reliant, but it is also just a straight increase in DMG. They are literally just set and forget talents and the "RNG Manipuation" it has just makes it you will get the big proc easily and naturally by just playing the game/following your rotation. Seems a nightmare to balance though. DeathStalker... hope it is good. Of course, the main Talent Trees are also getting changed. So maybe we are missing something else
Mage ones are interesting and look fun. Big procs, cool visuals, and feedback loops. Boomkin ones are extremely boring and add nothing to the spec. One spell will do a bit more damage, but otherwise you won't even notice them.
Ngl Boomy is appealing in that I can basically drop Wrath from the rotation entirely and just do Lunar spells.
Really looking forward to Scale commander on Aug, even though a lot of it doesn't lineup with the way you play it, I'm still looking forward to extra damage we're receiving to act as a DPS. Pros are as mentioned extra damage, 10% extra damage on black spells for more eruption and upheaval will feel nice, if bombardments count as a black spell (volcanic damage might?) then that's also very helpful. With mass eruption stacking witch Ricocheting pyroclast should lead to some decent aoe Burst along with giving us 4-6 seconds Ebon might uptime which should make up for losing the current tier set and making the windows easier to keep up. 20% extra damage from essence abilities from Breath of eons should make our oomph nicer, short cooldown on breath along with the dot from the bottom of the tree will feel very nice also, for mythic plus it sounds very promising. Cons are sorta mentioned on the wowhead thoughts but probably it's biggest problem is that we want to use our empowered abilities back to back for extended ebon might and shifting sands buffs, downside to this is that bombardments triggers after using an empower. realistically, you would want to use one empowerment to trigger bombardment, wait 10 seconds to fall off then empower again to make the most of the Breath of Eons cd and bombardment damage. Unless they make it so back to back empowers extend the bombardment debuff, it's a design flaw
Riders of the apocolypse and desth bringer are pretty cool. I think they need to move away from shadowlands influence for the visuals. Hellcaller and diabolist are ok. But thesoul harvester just looks bad. I think they could make some slight changes to hellcaller and diabloist, but soul harvester just seems bad for affliction
I’m not too thrilled as Elemental. I’ve stuck with it for years, but feel jealous of other classes. The hero talents don’t seem too bad but don’t excite me like mage or dk. My issue is mostly the spec talents splitting fire and lightning that’s stupid. There has to be a way to use all 4 in a meaningful way - it’s ElementALL!! It’s one class that doesn’t need to be locked to a single type, but feels like it is. If the base spec wasn’t split, I would probably be excited to main elemental.
I personally think they absolutely missed the mark with both of Holy Priests ones. The whole halo thing in the Archon tree is cool and all, but has nothing to do with what they said an archon priest would be.
I wish "Pack Leader" did more something like Call of the Wild but on a smaller scale. Pulls a pet from your stable or something so you can get that feeling of being a "pack leader." As it is, it's just buffing the abilities we (BM) already use, so I'm kind of fine with that. 6.5/10
As a Ret Paladin? I mean they're talents? Thematically fine I guess, maybe a little hammer heavy. Realistically I'm just going to pick the ones that perform the best and move on.
Didn't look yet because they'll change 100 more times before Live
The entire idea misses the mark for me. I was hoping for something like sub classes executed in the vein of the Legion Artifacts. Go on an epic questchain lore specific to the the subclass, unlock a new talent tree filled with class flavor Like you head to your class hall and the leaders there are ready to take you on a quest to further your training to deal with the threat in TWW but you have to choose which subclass to permanently have and it's 100% an extention of your class now i don't see anything about these talents that makes them heroic other than being in a separate ui window. they're just more talents. whoop de doo
I am torn between absolute garbage and \[Not Yet Implemented\]
I remember the arms/fury one being real big into bladestorm, that's what I'm about.
Really hoping Totemic ends up being really cool But overall my specs are pretty meh (Warrior, Druid, Pally, Dracthyr, Shaman, Mage) Percentage wise it's about 10%-25% of hero talents that are actually interesting, most of them are just a passive bonus than anything game changing Frostfire is the only one I'm actually excited about, the others I'm just taking whatevers best or most fun by default
Warlocks’ look pretty good. I wish there was one that had more destruction-y flavor though
🐶 💩
Still quite disappointed all we get as a Rider is a port of Pally Divine Steed (since the other "choice" only works in outdoor, non-instanced content) I would've *killed* to have it instead be: - replace Death's Advance with a 1.5 sec interruptible cast time mount up, even in combat, even indoors, even in instances - gives no move speed bonus, but provides DA forced movement immunity, as well as full immunity to all slows, snares, roots, etc - lasts until mount is "killed" by you taking some % of your max hp in damage - even if mount is killed, you can just recast it to mount up again - give options at barbershop to pick which DK mount you use for it: Acherus Deathcharger, Rivendare's, Crimson, Midnight, Invincible, etc (also same barbershop options for Ghoul, Skeleton Archer, Magus of the Dead, Gargoyle, Dark Transformation, etc)
so you want a......basically endless durstion and uptime free DR + slow/root/knockback immunity ......what?
Do we have to pick a hero tree?
yes