Dragonflight New Talent System

Ever since the release of World of Warcraft in 2004, talents are defining aspects of every specialization. For the first six years, all the way to the end of Wrath of the Lich King expansion and talent tree were similar to old-school RPG games with a massive amount of points granted with each level and an even higher amount of possible nodes to allocate them. Back in those days each specialization identity and design was not yet refined and a high number of players were forced to follow a single talent tree route as some talent nodes were clearly worse than others. Even at the end of the old-style talent system, there were a lot of classes that only had an illusion of choice when picking their desired talent nodes. With the release of World of Warcraft Cataclysm pre-patch Blizzard decided to move away from the aforementioned system altogether and replaced it with a selectable list of active abilities that you can choose from, each row of talents consisted of three similar themed abilities that you could choose one from, the new row would unlock every 15 levels. Systems like that persisted through the entirety of the remaining expansions and over 10 years with little to no changes, after few expansions there were no new talent rows altogether.

Dragonflight release is overhauling a whole talent system, bringing back the old system but completely changing into a modern style talent system consisting of not only one but two talent trees for each character, a class talent tree, and a specialization talent tree.

For each level your character will get one passive point to allocate into one of the talent trees, starting with the class talent tree at level 10 and finishing with the specialization talent tree point at level 70.

Talents are now respectable anywhere without a fee (like they used to be in the old system) and you can even save and import preset trees depending on the current content you are participating in.

Class talent tree is focused mostly on the survivability and utility aspect of the class, a lot of tools that were previously locked into a specific specialization are now available to every player of that class.

A specialization talent tree is focusing on specialization features, providing a large variety of skills that are helpful in specific situations.

Shadowlands provided each class with covenant abilities specific to chosen covenant with different effects based on specialization, a lot of active abilities that were widely popular became a possible talent choice.

There Are almost 40 specializations in World of Warcraft so it is practically impossible to show every change for every class talent tree, for purpose of this article we will take one spec as an example: Arcane Mage.

Previously arcane was a spec with the least amount of utility across all mage specializations, it was lacking in terms of survivability tools too, on the other hand, fire spec had access to the knockback ability “Blazing wave” and area of effect disorient “Dragon Breath” together with cheat-death style ability “Cauterize” making fire mage a better option for both group play and raid encounters even before considering the amount of damage dealt by each specialization.

The new mage tree provides almost all crowd control tools previously locked into specific specializations to all mage specs.

Arcane and Frost mages can now utilize Dragon Breath for content like mythic + keystones and Fire mages can enjoy 40% damage reduction from greater invisibility previously only available to arcane mages.

Previously available to Night Fae covenant ability “Shifting power” is now accessible as last-row talent.

The arcane mage tree provides a vast range of offensive abilities and passive bonuses that increase the damage output of specific spells.

Different nodes can be chosen based on the type of encounter, for example, for single target encounters node “Improve arcane missals” that increases the damage of arcane missals by 10% will be a better option than “Improved arcane explosion”  that increases the damage of arcane explosion by 10% since you are not going to utilize arcane explosion in single target encounter.

One of the covenant abilities “Radiant Spark” made it into an arcane mage specialization, allowing one to retain the playstyle known from World of Warcraft Shadowlands days.

New talents provide more options for players to choose from allowing them to tailor the talent tree for specific situations, while at the same time providing more utility for each character altogether.

Choices between talents are now more of an opportunity cost, a trading utility for survivability or vice versa.

Without a doubt, there still exist most optimal “builds” are created by the best players for each possible fight scenario, however, with how easy Blizzard made it to import the whole tress and swap talents on the fly it becomes much less of an issue compared to what once was a big problem during World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich king days.

Overall the new talent system is an objective improvement taking the best aspects from both previous talent systems, a lot of passives from the oldest system, and a high amount of active abilities from the recent one.

With the release of the newest expansion, there is a lot of stuff to do, hundreds of achievements and collectibles to obtain, new bosses, dungeons and raids to conquer and millions of other players to compete with. World of Warcraft is probably one of the most diverse games out there where it is simply impossible to excel at all of them if there ever is any loot you want to get, an achievement you just can’t stand or simply doesn’t have time to grind for, don’t hesitate to contact us for help.

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