Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Untalented

Okay so Scofield and I are terrible at um, writing stuff. This has a lot to do with Scofield being all "Guild drama!" (and crying) and me being all like "Sleep is for the weak!" (and being weak) and also with gnocchi. Gnocchi has a lot to do with why Scofield and I are bad at getting in vent together. We are eventually going to write more SUMMARYZ of The Guild, but in the meantime I will say this: "Game On" is not funny.

I've been watching the warlock talent trees develop, and a lot of my concerns have been downsized as they start to resemble things that follow the laws of logic. Kind of. In playing with them and putting together specs I start to get annoyed that I have to have silly talents like "Mana cost reduced" and "damage reduction." I'm a lean, mean, pew-pewing machine, frown on that noise. While the trees are much better designed now, I am finding myself inversely frustrated with them. In any given tree, the number of points you are forced to invest leave you with only one or two things you AREN'T picking up.

This has led me to the conclusion that I hate talent trees. 31 point, 71 point, whatever. People poke fun at "cookie cutter" specs, which generally are what most people end up with because they give you all your damage increasing abilities. No brainer, right? Then there are utility specs, where you enhance your survivability or utility in ways to ensure you will lose the least amount of damage, which can be fun to balance between tier levels. Like a destruction spec, where you need to pick up Replenishment AND Shadowfury, so you drop a point in Backlash. These kinds of specs won't really exist in the 31 point trees. You will pretty much already have everything you want for any given situation, and you won't have to make these kinds of choices. Not that they were perfect in the 71 point trees (Try getting anyone to pick up Improved Healthstone. You cant even think about it unless you are Destruction.) but there was still a lot more variability, and I for one liked taking advantage of that. Now it is pretty much, well, everything. So what's the point?

I'm not advocating for no talent trees whatsoever, exactly. Yet. Customizing your spell enhancements will be great while you are leveling. But at the end, you aren't investing points so much as you are just training the skill set for the spec you have chosen. Accessible to new players without the help of a spreadsheet? Yes. But specialized? No.

I'll be back soon, Scofield and the funnies in tow, to make fun of Codex being an e-slut.