World of Warcraft: Dragonflight’s talent trees getting a major rework

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight will eventually take players to the Dragon Isles, where they’ll be able to unleash new Dracthyr characters and play the new Evoker class. But beyond the fancy new content, Blizzard will also focus on improving older systems with Dragonflight. More specifically, the aged talent tree will see its first major overhaul in nearly a decade.

In a previous briefing, Polygon interviewed lead narrative designer Steve Danuser and lead combat designer Brian Holinka about what the revamped talent tree has to offer World of Warcraft: Dragonflight.

Return World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard replaced the original tree-based talent system for a small set of very powerful skills that the player could choose from. While the game has gained some readability – especially for new players – it has lost some depth and Blizzard is looking to bring it back into the game.

In Dragonflight, Blizzard will completely overhaul the talent system and bring it back to the tree version. As players level up, they’ll unlock points to put in one of two skill trees for their character. The first is a class skill tree while the other is a specialized skill tree. (Specialization tree will change depending on which spec player is active.)

Although players won’t be able to add points to as many specialties as in The Rage of the Lich King, the new system does not allow customization and hybridization. Do players want to play in their level fantasy? Or push their unique specialization even further? Players will only have so many points to allocate, but they’ll be able to quickly swap into different talent refills between operations or raid bosses, with the new refill system.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

With the new trees, players will be able to expand and customize their classes to fit their needs. But Blizzard emphasizes that while players can extend their classes in new ways, they are still classes they know (besides the new Evoker class, of course).

“The goal is that players can still feel comfortable playing the classes they know,” says Holinka. “We don’t want to be so disruptive and someone logs in on patch day, and they’re like ‘everything in my action bar has changed, I don’t even know how to play this class that I don’t know. have been playing for another 10 years.'”

Holinka has made it clear that the team wants to preserve what players know, and that players looking for something familiar will be able to craft their characters in a “very comfortable and familiar” way. However, the reverse is also true, and players will be able to build a list of near-biggest hits for their favorite class.

“So much talent, you know, we’ve been trying to say,” hey, what are some of the best things we’ve done for these grades and specs over the years, says Holinka. “. “’Azerite Trait, Artifact, Covenant Ability. What are some of the coolest things we have, and let’s put it in the talent tree so players can make some choices and get those cool things back. ”

Holinka added that they’ll be picking some of the most popular abilities and traits for each class, though players shouldn’t expect every fun thing they’ve ever been able to do to return. But anything a player labels as “iconic” should be a pretty safe bet.

Finally, we asked if talent trees would be easier to scale in the future, Holinka confirmed as part of the thinking.

After nearly a decade of a very rigorous selection process – Holinka says you now make “about seven choices about your character” – and there are no major Azerite, Artifact or Covenant systems in the game. Dragonflight, the talent rework is considered the most significant change in the expansion. As exciting as a new class, the new talent system will be the make-or-break feature for the next era of World of Warcraft.