New! Topic of the Week 8/7 - Talents Builds & Roles

Messaggio di Arideni

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NOTE: The format for Topic of the Week is being changed. In the future, there will simply be a monthly discussion about current trends & issues dealing with World of Warcraft. Stay tuned next week for more information.

Welcome to the "Topic of the Week" discussion. Our topic this week involves talent builds. More importantly, how certain talent builds mix with other players to form successful groups.

The classes in World of Warcraft generally fall into one of three categories: tank, healer, or damage dealer. While simple in its own right, what happens when one archetype tries to cross over?

Groups are typically made up of at least one tank, one healer, & several damage dealers. When a player, for example a warrior, joins a group they are often expected to tank just as many times a priest is expected to heal. These typical molds can & have been broken, but common stigma in the mainstream continue to dominate the perception of many classes.

That's where talents come in. Talents are a means to customize our characters. By level 60 or 70, characters have amassed so many talent points a "build" or "specialization" is possible. Warriors, for example, have three distinct talent trees. Arms talents lend themselves to high burst damage for player versus player combat (PVP). Fury talents are centered around dealing damage over time while Protection talents enhance & add new functionality to the class for "tanking" player versus environment (PVE) content.

So my thoughts for this week are all about how one can break the mold, as the game is now & as it may be in the future.

What "archetype" does your favorite class fall under?
What kind of type does your talent build support?
Do you always enjoy the same role in a group?
How does your role in PVE differ from that in PVP?
What do you think about the roles of players in certain levels of content & how that changes based on the raid format (10 player raids vs. 25 player raids)?
For example, warriors are often expected to tank, but with proper gear they become more than capable damage dealing machines.

Feel free to add anything more to the discussion as these are merely starter questions to get some thoughts flowing. Let's reflect on how our talents determine what we do in-game.
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Messaggio di MrFredII

So my thoughts for this week are all about how one can break the mold, as the game is now & as it may be in the future.

What "archetype" does your favorite class fall under?

I play a Mage. So my favorite class falls under "damage dealers"

What kind of type does your talent build support?

Whether for PvP or PVE mage are designed to be a damage class

Do you always enjoy the same role in a group?

Yes when blizzard allows my class to fill that role

How does your role in PVE differ from that in PVP?

It doesn't within the scope of the questions. Mages also provide CC more so in PvP than raids, but at its base we are a damage class

What do you think about the roles of players in certain levels of content & how that changes based on the raid format (10 player raids vs. 25 player raids)?

For example, warriors are often expected to tank, but with proper gear they become more than capable damage dealing machines.

Mages are a "pure" class. By that I mean that we are not able to heal, nor tank (except for certain highly contrived fights). Our role "changes" solely based on raid or PvP viability. Unfortunately given blizzards desire to balance PvP effectiveness between classes, a pure caster damage class like the mage suffers at the hands of other damage classes for PvE.

Not to be argumentative but your entire question shows how little most of the other classes understand the plight of the mage and the rogue. By design we are not able to perform in multiple roles. We can only fill one function and as blizzard augments the damage and survivability of the hybrid and other classes our desirability in raids is diminished.

Raids in progression are almost by definition min/maxers. By that I mean once the group has the specific skills required for the bosses, they fill out the raid with maximums in the arch types. Why take more than one mage or rogue when you can use hybrid classes that can do the damage job as well as the pure class and bring additional flexibility? The answer is that you don't.

Blizzard needs to solve this. They need to make the mage and rogue the best at the job of damage by a large enough margin to offset the benefit of the hybrid classes cross over talent specs. This would be very easy were they not also trying to make WoW and E-sport. If Blizzard fails to solve this, you'll see the end of mages in end game.

Messaggio di 187238

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New! Topic of the Week 8/7 - Talents Builds & Roles

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