Free Respec. Why not?

[ajax34i]

I think he gets it but doesn't agree with you, no sense re-explaining it.

It would have been nice if all WoW classes started as DPS classes at their core, and then the ability to tank, heal, and CC were secondary abilities.  And then, if the only thing that could be changed via talents was the flavor of DPS that your class could do.  Priests would have been mages-with-healing (mages: DPS-with-CC), warriors would have been melee-DPS with taunt abilities (as opposed to rogues: melee DPS with CC), and so on.

May have been a different game though.  Isn't WAR trying to do this, every class DPS'es at its core, etc?

[Dren]

I think he gets it but doesn't agree with you, no sense re-explaining it.

It would have been nice if all WoW classes started as DPS classes at their core, and then the ability to tank, heal, and CC were secondary abilities.  And then, if the only thing that could be changed via talents was the flavor of DPS that your class could do.  Priests would have been mages-with-healing (mages: DPS-with-CC), warriors would have been melee-DPS with taunt abilities (as opposed to rogues: melee DPS with CC), and so on.

May have been a different game though.  Isn't WAR trying to do this, every class DPS'es at its core, etc?

Well, it makes sense considering EVERYTHING about the game requires DPS to succeed outside of crafting. (Except for the fact that many items are only obtained through .... DPS.) 

I can't think of any one quest where you get to Taunt or Heal Your Way to Victory!  (Excluding the medic quest to cap 300 skill.)

[Nebu]

1. Remove buffs and buff specialist classes.  Focusing on target debuffs is more proactive and often more fun.

2. Give everyone the ability to self heal.  Having one person that does nothing but stare at health bars while spamming keys is a mistake.  Allow players to make the tough choice of knowing when to heal and when to dps. 

3. Every class should have at least one type of useful cc (I think they have this one covered).  ALL CC SHOULD BREAK WITH DAMAGE (especially in pvp). 

4.  ALL CC NEEDS AN IMMUNITY TIMER.  Being perma-stunned/mezzed/rooted sucks.

5. If you give any class the ability to become hyper-specialized, the playerbase will find a way to use this hyperspecialization to their advantage.  The cry for free respecs is proof of this.  Players want to be hyperspecialized for every available situation rather than accepting the cost-benefit of a versatile spec vs a specialized one.     

[stray]

3. Every class should have at least one type of useful cc (I think they have this one covered).

Shamans don't.

[lamaros]

So you don't mean for them to each to be able to do these things equally well? Just to be able to do them moderately well?

Fair point. But I think those issues don't stem from talents per se, but rather from general skill design and game mechanics. Which are rather too fundamental to change at this point.

If everything can DPS then the things that can DPS and do something else will become better... unless you force usefulness in some way. See Shadow Priests and Warlocks in early TBC. Mages were only useful for Sheep, Rogues mostly useless, while Druids Tanks were preferred over Warriors and Pallies over other healers.

Now, if you just want everyone to be able to do everything in the way Paelos said.. they can righ now. They just have to spec a specific way and will not necessarily be better at it than another class.

Talent removal will not fix the issues you have. You'll just have them with the classes themselves. Then they'll give each class all the talented abilities, have to rebalance the entire game, and end up with a situation where one class is clearly better than another in every way, thus pissing off a significant portion of the player base in a far more substantial way than your current complaint.

Anyway, like ajack said. I understand your complaint, I just think you're being very narrow sighted about the game mechanics.

[Nebu]

3. Every class should have at least one type of useful cc (I think they have this one covered).

Shamans don't.

I wasn't sure here... my shaman is tauren and they get the racial.  They also get a snare totem (which I consider to be cc).  Splitting hairs here, I guess.

[Rasix]

And.. FROST SHOCK!

[Fordel]

Useful CC for a instance/group. My druid has 3 casted forms of CC. All moot in 90% of dungeons.

[stray]

I think PVP is the main concern of Shamans. That snare is pretty much useless. Druids, on the other hand.. Well, both hibernate and the root are on a regular use basis. Bread and butter skills. Never played enough to get the cyclone thing, but that looks just as useful too.

[Morat20]

Useful CC for a instance/group. My druid has 3 casted forms of CC. All moot in 90% of dungeons.

Yeah, I always felt that sucked for Druids. There's a lot of stuff that needs tightening -- as a Hunter I have several aspects that are uniformly pointless, and two useless traps, but at least some of them are okay pretty much anywhere.

[Dren]

5. If you give any class the ability to become hyper-specialized, the playerbase will find a way to use this hyperspecialization to their advantage.  The cry for free respecs is proof of this.  Players want to be hyperspecialized for every available situation rather than accepting the cost-benefit of a versatile spec vs a specialized one.     

I agree, but it goes further than that.  It isn't the players that want to be hyperspecialized.  They designed the game so that if you don't have those hyperspecialized characters in your group for instances, you will fail or at least have a really hard time of it.  Because of this, groups won't pick you up if you have some kind of "this build just feels right" variety because after the 3rd wipe, people tend to get pretty pissy.

Tanks - get hurt so quickly they either can't be healed in time before death or burn through the healers mana too quickly.
Healers - not big enough heals or they are constantly running out of mana.

Sometimes you can deal with one or the other, but if you have both?  Failure.  If you are talking about Heroics or 10-man or higher, don't even try.

[ajax34i]

If everything can DPS then the things that can DPS and do something else will become better... unless you force usefulness in some way.

I was thinking "nobody will just DPS and everybody will be able to "do something else".  The classes that don't have "tank" or "heal" as the "something else" will definitely have CC (which could be debuffs, or movement-impairing abilities).  No pure DPS'ers, every class does about the same damage, and everyone DPS'es while they do other things.  Depending on the encounter, your tank could focus on keeping aggro, your healer could elect to use his mana for heals, and your CC'er could mash buttons to keep several mobs frozen, but at any given moment they could switch to burn-it-down! mode instantly, because the DPS (primary mode) part of their class doesn't get diminished or disabled by their secondary abilities.

Tanking would have to be changed from a passive ability to an active one, so that it's the same as healing or CC'ing.  The tank would normally be an otherwise-easy-to-kill DPS class; no ungodly armor, no extreme stamina, no passive doge, parry, shield block, etc.  If he chooses to tank, then yeah he can activate damage reduction / absorbtion abilities, he can use rage to fuel short-term stances to parry / hide behind shield, or cast short term immunities, whatever, but he won't be doing DPS while he does that, and it's all activated, nothing passive.

[Merusk]

And.. FROST SHOCK!

It's not as funny if you don't link the vid.. I'm sure most have forgotten or never seen it by now.   (I'd link it but I'm at work and youtube is blocked.)

[Fordel]

I think PVP is the main concern of Shamans. That snare is pretty much useless. Druids, on the other hand.. Well, both hibernate and the root are on a regular use basis. Bread and butter skills. Never played enough to get the cyclone thing, but that looks just as useful too.

What are you hibernating in PvP these days? Not having it tied to Control of Nature (Balance Talent) combined with the 'all PvP CC is 10 seconds now!' and new mend pet on hunters makes it pretty darn useless most of the time. Catching another druid with it is nearly as difficult. In TBC, I use it on the odd ray in heroic slavepens and to stop the random animal from interupting my herb harvesting.

I only use it for herb nodes because Soothe Animal is a giant pile of ass compared to Soothe Mind. (Long ago they had to nerf Soothe Mind because people were using it to farmsploit instances to quickly, so they gave it a cast time and a chance on resist. When they did this, they also did the same to Soothe Animal, for umm, completeness sake I suppose. Well a little later, they un-nerfed Soothe Mind and made it instant again, keeping the chance to resist... but they never undid the change to Soothe Animal. To this very day, this vexes me!)


Cyclone is mostly a way to get people to break their keyboards in frustration in PvP. The only way to break it, is via your PvP trinket. Nothing else can do it. Not even a Paladin Shield or a Mass Dispel. Six Seconds, 3 Seconds, 1 Second, Immune till DR refreshes. When something is cycloned, nothing goes through to it, be it damage or heals. It's part of why Resto druids are such Giant PiTA's in 2v2 arena.

[Oban]

And.. FROST SHOCK!

It's not as funny if you don't link the vid..

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fpoGKw6L4cM