Almost every complaint about the ShB job changes could be solved with talents

[MerlinCross]

I don't know why people are bashing this thread, a talent system giving more diversity to the players would be great. I loved wow's talent system because it allowed me to switch between tank, melee dps, or ranged dps all on one class. Think death knights are cool and you want to play but don't want to tank? Go frost or unholy. Want to play a warlock and be a summoner? Play demonology. Already content with the spec currently in game? Stay in the same spec.

Part of the problem, at least for me, is how the community responds to it. In your example; why go Frost/Unholy on death night when X is mathed out to be the better DPS? You're a Warlock with Demonology, too bad. We need Destruction Warlock. Heck, I had a friend playing one class and was forced by his guild to switch to Restoration Druid because that's what they "NEEDED".

That was in WoW though right? That could never happen here right? Yeah. The community that copied STR accessories of higher end raiders in Heavensward, that blames Paladins for Clemency casts, that complained till every Card is Balance, and more.

I like the idea of Talents. Just the idea. But how do you stop just 1-2 talent set ups from being crowned King by the community and then said community getting salty when someone deviates from it? or making content balanced around said less effective talents?

In short, the idea isn't bad. I don't have faith in the devs to balance it or the community to not break it.

[SpeckledBurd]

The devs have also gone on record as saying that they consider the various jobs within a given role to be the specs of that role rather than wanting to subdivide them any further, and the game supports that with the exception of weapons unless you’re a melee.

[GrumbleBeard]

I played Warcraft for a year a long time ago and I got bullied for taking lightwell as a priest.

[Tryzn]

For a long time, one of the biggest turnoffs for me about this game has been the lack of job customization. I loved having the cross-class skills in the base game, even though every job pretty much had a standard setup for endgame, because it let me play the job the way I wanted to play to a small degree.

Now those are gone, but I think jobs would benefit greatly from some kind of customization. Let's walk through some examples:

NIN
Complaint: Job is too gimped on damage because of Trick Attack utility
Solution: Give us a choice between TA for group content or a new ability that increases our personal DPS when soloing

BRD
Complaint: Identity of the job was lost when the songs lost their group utility
Solution: Give us a choice between songs that provide utility and songs that provide personal damage

MCH
Complaint: High ping means the job is unplayable in certain regions
Solution: Make Overheat a talent and let players choose a different ability with less ping dependence

SCH
Complaint: SCH's identity as a more damage-focused healer has been lost
Solution: Allow players to spec into more damage-based abilities if they want to

SMN
Complaint: Egis feel useless now
Solution: Allow players to spec out of egis if they want to or allow them to spec into new spells that take more advantage of the egis if they like the egis

MNK
Complaint: Abilities like Tornado Kick, the new Six-Sided Star, and Riddle of Fire are unpopular with some players because they are situational or slow down the rotation
Solution: Make these abilities talents and let players opt in if they like them or choose a different style if they don't

They are many other examples.

First off let me say your idea which is a good one is wrong. Jobs are already a lot to handle with melee needing to worry about attacking from the front or back, and with the rotations being what they being now you want to add In Talents to change that now? That’s too much.

Also think about this nin is a support job if you turn it into a max dmg job then no one would ever play the support job style.

Thing is people are getting to caught up in numbers, as long as you can beat content who cares if you do 10k or you do 13k.

Trust me raids are tested using under geared qa teams with. Just have fun with the game bro. Adding in talents is a very bad idea just look at wow

[Liselsia]

Yoshi since ARR has been extremely vocal that he wants player to have no customization over the jobs. The quote is something like "Players should only worry about learning how to play their job, any customization is just a distraction and needlessly complicates things for the player".

This design philosophy has stay true to this day. So if Yoshi hasn't went against his word by now, he never will.

[Ardox]

But as I said before with the community being "DPS first"

And the reason being, the only thing important in the game is to make the health of the boss equal to 0...

I really don't see how they could change that without reworking basically everything, but for the sake illustrating what I meant:

Imagine adding a 2nd stat to attacks (like aetherial shield busting) and give a regenerating shield to the boss. Now, the new stat gives you no more DPS, but keeping the shield low helps the damage goes through. (e.g. full shield reduce incoming attack strength by 50%). Now you have 2 stats to take into account. In the same encounter, you can have monsters with very high HP and almost no shield (to which shield busting won't help you much), followed by monster with very strong shields (to which having overboosted DPS stats won't help much either)

[MerlinCross]

And the reason being, the only thing important in the game is to make the health of the boss equal to 0...

I really don't see how they could change that without reworking basically everything, but for the sake illustrating what I meant:

Imagine adding a 2nd stat to attacks (like aetherial shield busting) and give a shield to the boss. Now, the new stat gives you no more DPS, but keeping the shield low helps the damage goes through. (e.g. full shield reduce incoming attack strength by 50%). Now you have 2 stats to take into account. In the same encounter, you can have monsters with very high HP and almost no shield (to which shield busting won't help you much), followed by monster with very strong shields (to which having overboosted DPS stats won't help much either)

And the only important thing in your set up is still "Make the health of the boss equal to 0".

Does it matter to keep the boss's shield low? Possibly, but if it's mathed out you can get around it by having this proper set up, that's the meta and you are bad for not following it. Or just make the healers peel shields off while the Tanks and DPS go full damage. Or just make the tanks do it. Regardless of what the actual answer is, it will be found, followed, and beat into the ground by the community. You'll still be expected to march in step with everyone else, making all those choices effectively worthless.

The community is DPS first because that's all that is important. A talent system won't change that. And changing the battle system might but we're still going to have community going Meta first and enforcing that on everyone. If the meta is DPS first we're back where we started. I mean I played Guild Wars 2 at launch and the only accepted way to play that game easily it seemed was just to dump all your talent points into Raw Damage. And while that wasn't the wrong way to play(the few dungeons I tried we lost due to not having enough damage so it was kinda mathed around having all that extra damage) it made it bloody boring to me seeing 4 trees to put points into and only one of them being Viable by both the game and community.

Look up Path of Exile too if you want a good example of "Unlimited Choices" but really only about 5 builds that work past a certain point.

[Xyr]

Part of the problem, at least for me, is how the community responds to it. In your example; why go Frost/Unholy on death night when X is mathed out to be the better DPS? You're a Warlock with Demonology, too bad. We need Destruction Warlock. Heck, I had a friend playing one class and was forced by his guild to switch to Restoration Druid because that's what they "NEEDED".

That was in WoW though right? That could never happen here right? Yeah. The community that copied STR accessories of higher end raiders in Heavensward, that blames Paladins for Clemency casts, that complained till every Card is Balance, and more.

I like the idea of Talents. Just the idea. But how do you stop just 1-2 talent set ups from being crowned King by the community and then said community getting salty when someone deviates from it? or making content balanced around said less effective talents?

In short, the idea isn't bad. I don't have faith in the devs to balance it or the community to not break it.

From personal experience, I never had been coerced into playing tank on my death knight. For 5-6 years I raided hardcore in WoW in top 30 US ranking guilds. I switched guilds every few years because guilds come and go, disband or my schedule had to change, but there was no guild I was in that forced caster dps druid to heal, healing class to dps or tank. The only time I remember this happening was in WoW classic. However, ever since the inception of dungeon/raid finder, where you queue for the roles you want to play it was basically phased out.

Not to mention, your anecdote isn't exclusive to WoW. People on FFXIV who has both tank, healing, and dps classes lvld to max lvl can be coerced into playing roles they don't want to because they have another class at max lvl. But as far as I know this almost never happens. So this concern is completely negligible.

[ColaSama]

Imagine adding a 2nd stat to attacks (like aetherial shield busting) and give a shield to the boss. Now, the new stat gives you no more DPS, but keeping the shield low helps the damage goes through. (e.g. full shield reduce incoming attack strength by 50%). Now you have 2 stats to take into account. In the same encounter, you can have monsters with very high HP and almost no shield (to which shield busting won't help you much), followed by monster with very strong shields (to which having overboosted DPS stats won't help much either)

Well... it doesn't change a thing : it's still a dps race, "aetherial shield" or not, to drop the boss to 0. The shield would be an inconvenience, nothing more. It reminds me of Divinity Original Sin 2 : they put a shield to enemies and player units, and as long as the shield was up, crowd control abilities are ineffective. The solution ? Burst it down with big dps, to, again, bring the enemies's life bars to 0.

It's a combat game. The point is to defeat bosses. Bosses have health bars. We must do dps to bring them down. Dps is and will aways be the central point of it all. Because of that simple fact, and the natural elitism of gaming communities, people will want you (and pressure you) to be optimized, to be Meta. A talent tree would change make things worse as seen by multiple other games like WoW and PoE like MerlinCross said : it will give you an illusion of choice... but in reality, at some point, for whatever reason (be it your group or a "difficulty wall"), you will be forced to realize that only a few builds are effective.

I will give an other example : Moba games. You can build whatever items you want on a character. So much freedom, so much fun. But then you realize that by DESIGN you need to do the right build or else you are worthless. Sure, you made your funny build but for what ? To do 0 damage to the enemy team ? To be 1 shoted because you didn't build tank on a tank type character ? No. You NEED to build a certain way, or else you will not do much things. Maybe at low level play, but again, most competitive games are balanced around high level.

I could go on and on : WoW ? Even a worthless low level guild will be pissed if you don't bring a solid build. Imagine you want to play your worthless "I'm so free" build... but for what ? You will be less optimized, and you will take longer to kill the boss. Why ? Because the spell you take looks cool ? Come on, after a few days you will not give a shit about the spell effect. The novelty will die, and the only thing that will stay is "how can I kill the boss faster ?". That's it.

[ColaSama]

From personal experience, I never had been coerced into playing tank on my death knight. For 5-6 years I raided hardcore in WoW in top 30 US ranking guilds. I switched guilds every few years because guilds come and go, disband or my schedule had to change, but there was no guild I was in that forced caster dps druid to heal, healing class to dps or tank. The only time I remember this happening was in WoW classic. However, ever since the inception of dungeon/raid finder, where you queue for the roles you want to play it was basically phased out.

Not to mention, your anecdote isn't exclusive to WoW. People on FFXIV who has both tank, healing, and dps classes lvld to max lvl can be coerced into playing roles they don't want to because they have another class at max lvl. But as far as I know this almost never happens. So this concern is completely negligible.

Excuse me but... the topic is "adding talent trees", not "changing of classes/jobs" nor "adding new specs like in WoW".