Mountain Thane Warrior Interview with Bajheera and Plkatv - Fury & Protection Hero Talent Tree

Posted 2023/12/18 at 2:41 PM by Archimtiros

BajheeraPlkatvInterview with Bajheera and PlkatvBajheera's videoEmbodying Class FantasyHow do you feel about the fantasy of the tree and how well do the talents embody it. What are your favorite parts of the tree?

Mountain Thane felt like a slam dunk. When I think about an iconic Warrior archetype, I think back to the Warcraft 3 Mountain King and being able to bring that into WoW with is a really cool opportunity. Adding in lightning strikes is cool and adds a new spin, which can create some cool gameplay moments. Avatar is one of my favorite abilities in the game, and the Avatar of the Storm capstone talent even includes an improved storm-infused visual during the effect!

Things that proc cooldowns when they're on cooldown are very cool. Mountain Thane was actually the first tree we discussed for Hero talents, and it hits on all the familiar points of Avatar, Storm Bolt, Thunder Clap, along with the new Lightning Strikes.

Describe Thunder Blast, how does it differ from Thunder Clap?

Its an enhanced Thunder Clap, injecting a little extra thematic Stormstrike damage (not to be confused with the Shaman ability), which the tree synergies with. It is also visually distinct from a normal Thunder Clap, and so it really helps sell the Mountain Thane theme.

We're actively looking into Mountain Thane visuals right now, but we did show a bit of it at BlizzCon, which is sort of the starting point for that ability.

Why did you wave away from themes like Blademaster and Gladiator that are already built into the lore of WoW that players have been asking for all these years?

Great question. One of the cool things about working on the Warcraft franchise is that there are so many cool things to pull from, and many iconic things that people expect, but it's impossible to hit all of them. Early on, we discussed Blademaster and Gladiator at length, but we decided to go in a different direction for different reasons.

Blademaster has two iconic abilities: Windwalk invisibility and Mirror Images, which felt like a very large departure of what World of Warcraft Warriors are, and we didn't feel comfortable making that kind of change. They're both very cool abilities, but they already exist within Mages (and don't pass the "Warrior test" for Bajheera). Samuro is very fun and he's even featured inside Ashenvale in Classic Season of Discovery, but the team didn't feel like those two abilities would fit, and without them is it really Blademaster?

Gladiator has a lot of history in WoW, but it goes against the core philosophy of hero talents, which is not introducing new roles. There would be an expectation that it would enable Protection as a DPS spec, but that's not something they're really looking to do with hero talents. Likewise, any kind of departure from the history of Gladiator wouldn't feel right either.

Creating Hero TalentsHow was the experience of combining different spec identities? Now that we're talking about things that people have an idea of - people have an idea of what an Arms, Fury, or Prot Warrior is, but what was it like combining those things and making sense of new talents that affect multiple specializations?

It was really fun, and a huge challenge. With 39 specs, that's a lot of things to talk about, from what is/not appropriate, and narrowing it down to things they thought they could hit. The BlizzCon slide showcasing all of the names came directly from those conversations. Sometimes it's easy, things like Mountain Thane and Lightsmith just make sense - Mountain Thane already has an established familiarity evoking ideas of Thunder Clap and Avatar, and just based off the name Lightsmith gives you an idea of creating things (in this case, Armaments) out of the Light. For things like Chronowarden, both Augmentation and Preservation share time magic in their talent trees, so focusing that into a hero tree is a great starting point.

On the flipside, there are things like San'layn, which screams Blood Death Knight, but we need to find hooks for Unholy - things like Diseases or ability replacements, so that it feels good for both.

Balancing Trees in Different ContentWhen creating these hero classes, do you have a specific content type or build in mind while designing them? For example, are the trees built with the thought of PvP, Single Target, or AoE, and how would you prevent every Prot Warrior from going Mountain Thane, because it's just all around better for tanking?

It's something front of mind while designing. Our goal is not for any of the trees to be best for a specific piece of content or spec. If you're a Prot Warrior, you shouldn't feel like you have to go Mountain Thane, Colossus should feel like a real option. We try to make sure they have a similar amount of single target vs AoE nodes, defensive vs utility options, so ideally we try to keep them as close together as possible... but we know that players love to min/max. They're going to find the one with the best PvP utility and maybe that is triple Storm Bolt, but maybe Colossus will have something cool too, giving you options to weigh and decision points to be made.

Players may find a 1% optimization within one of the trees, but there isn't going to be a lot of friction to changing. That's a lesson learned from covenant abilities - they've eased the restrictions of changing and from the start players will be able to change talents and between hero talent trees at any time.

To reiterate: the goal is to keep the trees as close together as possible for single target, AoE, defensives, and utility. Unlike class and spec trees, you'll also have the entire hero tree unlocked, which actually makes tuning a little easier.

Designing for PvE vs PvPDoes these ideas generally appear as PvE and then you figure out how if its good for PvP too, or do you brainstorm something sick for PvP and then figure out how to make it work for PvE? Do you have people who are PvE and PvP minded, similar to how many players tend to be?

The answer probably changes depending on the designer you ask, which is one of the great things about working on the game - they have a very diverse combat team, and that breadth of experience makes for a better game. The combat team includes people who are casual in PvE and PvP, as well as those pushing for Hall of Fame and Gladiator every season.

The talent trees are meant to be an evergreen system, and should feel good for every type of player. Anecdotally, Spear of Bastion was initially conceptualized as a very PvP focused ability, but it needed more throughput to stand up in PvE. Similar discussions have taken place within the hero talents, to help ensure they work for both.

Tier Sets vs Hero TalentsHow do you see tier sets interacting with Hero talents? Are you that far into development to figure out how they'll work together yet?

It's certainly top of mind for us. Nothing new to share about tier sets in The War Within, but the implications of having tier sets on top of hero talent choices is certainly something we're considering. In Season 3, we actively made class sets more involved and impactful on talent tree selections, and we're curious about your thoughts on that design:

Bajheera: I think it's really freaking cool to look at your tier set affecting specific talents like Odyn's Fury and Bloodthirst, building you toward some kind of Annihilator bloodthirst spamming build. Arms' gigantic Thunder Clap bleed spread was also sick. I love the fact that you can take a look at your build and it has bonuses that may synergize well with certain talents on the tree. It allows you to guide players into trying different builds, its interesting, really cool, and I'm all for it.

PIkaTV: I like that it shakes things up. I'll spend a whole raid tier with one best build, Raging Blow the entire season - getting the new tier set is really cool, because now I'm thinking about Annihilator and Bloodthirst. For Prot, last season was all about using Last Stand on cooldown, whereas now it's an actual oh-crap button again. So I like that each season feels fresh; without the tier set or extreme tuning every tier, we'd just be playing the same build all expansion. Something I worry about is if the hero talents are very strong or impactful, how much will change? Am I always going to be speccing into Thunder Clap as a Fury Warrior vs it changing up every tier?

With many talents synergizing with specific abilities, such as Thunder Clap or Bloodthirst, do you feel like hero talents might push people into certain builds?

Ultimately the goal for hero talents is just to enhance your base build and however you want to play a class, whether it's Annihilator or Raging Blow, both of those should feel like they work with Mountain Thane. In reality, what you see on live right now and what's planned for 11.0 might not always mesh, so there's some work to be done on the backend to account for that - maybe it means Bloodthirst needs to be better incorporated into the main build, so it doesn't feel completely pushed out. This isn't a Warrior specific issue either, several classes need to be looked at to ensure they align with the hero talent philosophies.

If you feel like you have to take three off the path talent nodes just to make a Hero tree work, that's something we need to focus on and fix. That's great feedback to give us as things go live - we don't want to reduce the amount of choice in the base talent tree. For example, if Mountain Thane heavily modifies a talent Thunder Clap, should that talent be free or baseline within the regular tree?

Providing FeedbackWhat is the best way for players to provide feedback?

Player feedback is super important and one of the reasons we're doing things like this as early as possible. Best source is the official forums, managed by our community team. They're nice because they're organized and concise. Still, things like videos, Reddit posts, and Discord threads all get read too. Even tier lists, as long as they're well explained and eloquent. In general, we prefer written feedback, and we love hearing about how things affect you personally - stories about impactful choices or frustrations are just as important as tuning to us.

Please don't sandbag tier lists!

When Can We Try Hero Talents?

Our goal is to have as many hero talent trees testable on day one of public War Within testing as possible. It's a big part of class design, so we want them online as soon as possible. Blog posts can only go so far, but we got a ton of great feedback for the initial Dragonflight talent trees that way, so the goal following the New Year is to do more of these articles and showcase more trees, creating a good source of community feedback to iterate on before public testing begins.

Mountain Thane Warrior Talent Tree

Comment by ExtremelyCrustyThunder Clap in Fury? Pass.Comment by Auzsi17"I think it's really freaking cool to look at your tier set affecting specific talents" You mean forcing dead talent down on the player's throat?Comment by GuiAlcantaraI'm so hyped for this. I really liked the mountain king hero from Warcraft 3, and i can finally play as one without rolling an enhancement shaman. I just hope they give a new animation for avatar. Just turning big and grey is not as cool.Comment by Archimtiros"I think it's really freaking cool to look at your tier set affecting specific talents" You mean forcing dead talent down on the player's throat?Comment by ArchimtirosI'm so hyped for this. I really liked the mountain king hero from Warcraft 3, and i can finally play as one without rolling an enhancement shaman. I just hope they give a new animation for avatar. Just turning big and grey is not as cool.Comment by m4DD0ggThunder Clap in Fury? Pass.Comment by TokenScramblesMountain Thane just sounds like Enhance at home. Like...you couldn't go with anything else?Comment by zetsu193"I think it's really freaking cool to look at your tier set affecting specific talents" You mean forcing dead talent down on the player's throat?Comment by marcialhdMountain Thane just sounds like Enhance at home. Like...you couldn't go with anything else?https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Mountain_kingComment by Auzsi17"I think it's really freaking cool to look at your tier set affecting specific talents" You mean forcing dead talent down on the player's throat?Comment by ArchimtirosThe problem with this mentality, or at least the way its implemented in the current tier, is that it becomes the ONLY viable option. The current Fury playstyle isnt fun imo compared to last season. I like the idea of making more things viable but the problem is that every time it turns into 1 build is so much better that it becomes the only viable option.one

Play what you want.

Play what's "viably best."

Play what's actually "viable," even if it's not strictly best.

Comment by TokenScramblesMountain Thane just sounds like Enhance at home. Like...you couldn't go with anything else?https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Mountain_kingComment by zetsu193The problem with this mentality, or at least the way its implemented in the current tier, is that it becomes the ONLY viable option. The current Fury playstyle isnt fun imo compared to last season. I like the idea of making more things viable but the problem is that every time it turns into 1 build is so much better that it becomes the only viable option.one

Play what you want.

Play what's "viably best."

Play what's actually "viable," even if it's not strictly best.

Comment by 2lazy2jz"I think it's really freaking cool to look at your tier set affecting specific talents" You mean forcing dead talent down on the player's throat?Comment by 2lazy2jzThe problem with this mentality, or at least the way its implemented in the current tier, is that it becomes the ONLY viable option. The current Fury playstyle isnt fun imo compared to last season. I like the idea of making more things viable but the problem is that every time it turns into 1 build is so much better that it becomes the only viable option.one

Play what you want.

Play what's "viably best."

Play what's actually "viable," even if it's not strictly best.

Comment by KillerMoyashi13Cool abilities, though I still wish the name "Mountain Thane" weren't so dwarf-specific. I'm not really excited to be a night elf mountain thane. In trying to add more class identity, a choice like this almost makes it worse for many races.Comment by ArchimtirosIts an Impossible problem if you dont make a stance one way or another. Comment by st1flerHonestly I'm glad they didn't make gladiator.Comment by RavenoflogicMeta slave culture ruined all MMO's.Comment by EneathrieliaI feel there is an issue of tier sets -forcing- certain builds, making anything else practically impossible to talent into - considering the tier set ONLY interacts with a given talent or two.

Warrior this tier has, in my opinion, quite significant flaws in resource management and quite confusing and contradicting priorities.
Arms: With ignore pain gone from interacting with AM / ToM, you often find yourself overcapped on rage. So what should you do? Instinct would tell you to spend the resource if you are resource capped, since that contributes to AM (Anger management) and ToM (Test of might). However, spending resources gives overpower procs, overpower increases mortal strike damage and can reset mortal strike + reduce its rage cost and apply Fatal mark. You feel like wasting a global in a sense no matter what you do. Do you pass on overpower flashing with 2 charges? Do you prioritize slam/thunder clap to dump rage when whirlwind is on CD? And atop you have a free execute proc that only further makes you overcap rage, since you ought to spend the proc asap given it procs independantly on sudden death talent.

Fury: Especially in execute phase, you find yourself able to just Bloodthirst - Rampage chain (Hell, sometimes you can literally rampage into rampage), completely skipping execute from rotation. Should you press execute and overcap rage, because execute will have increased crit chance with Juggernaut? But then pressing rampage gives an empowered bloodthirst (bloodbath) - that hits about as hard as Execute and synergizes with tier set - and pressing bloodthirst/bloodbath can reduce Odyn's fury CD and apply a bleed. So do you overcap rage? Remove execute from rotation? I do not think a finishing off move should ever feel like an awful button to press once it finally lights up.

Same issue is with frost mages for example. Already last tier, glacial spike turned out to be the best ST option after numerous buffs to it. You could opt out of it in an exchange of smoother playstyle not relying on hard-casting spikes, which was a fair trade off.
Now if you are to spec out of glacial spike, you may as well just use old tier set since current tier set ONLY works with glacial spike, effectively locking you into long-cast spell that on some fights simply feels awful due to movement requirements.

Tier sets to me feel better when they buff the class as a whole or its core abilities. Not enforce a singular talent to be played since it does not interact with anything else. There is matter of "meta" versus "fun", but losing on an use of entire tier set that makes up a significant portion of some spec's dps is another matter entirely.