WoW demon Cortyn has criticized the hero talents of World of Warcraft. Some are so complex that they can hardly be used without addons.
The launch of World of Warcraft The War Within is now a few days behind us, and I have used the time and the early access to already bring several characters to level 80. In doing so, I have also spent a lot of time exploring the individual hero talents of the different classes.
Overall, I like the hero talents well. Thematically, they are mostly coherent (except for “Frostfire” for a frost mage) and offer interesting options.
However, what bothers me is the varying quality and the impact on gameplay, that hero talents bring with them.
Two examples of more “passive hero talent trees” are the “Diabolist” for warlocks and the “Fel-Scarred” for demon hunters.
The most important thing is: You only need to take minimal care of them. For warlocks, the huge additional demons appear almost automatically during normal gameplay—regardless of whether you are aiming for it or not. Additionally, if a spell is further enhanced, it clearly blinks in the interface. It is all very straightforward. Sure, you can optimize it a bit through gameplay, but there are no major screw-ups that can happen.
For demon hunters, all the effects occur more or less “on the side” during the normal rotation or as a passive effect that is permanently active.
While it is relatively simple, it just feels “good” when playing. When a big pit lord briefly waves through a portal and lasers the enemies away, or my demon hunter explodes in novas of hellfire, you feel strong and powerful.
Hero talents with too many new effects
However, there are hero talents that are so diverse and complex that they completely exceed my attention. As an example, I would like to mention the arcane mage with his hero talent tree “Sunfury”.
Sunfury is oriented around the well-known mage Kael’thas Sunstrider. Everything revolves around the small fireballs, the “Spellfire Spheres”, and summoning a phoenix that provides support in combat. Up to this point, it’s all quite simple.
The problem, however, is that the Sunfury hero talent tree brings many more buffs and procs with it.
The catch is that arcane mages already have to pay a lot of attention to “procs” and temporary buffs anyway. The standard build already has a whole range of these effects.
This means that my buff bar regularly looks like this:
And this, mind you, in solo play. If group members, trinkets, or combat effects are added, it becomes even more confusing.
The new effects from the Spellfury tree add even more buffs, which often have a short duration of 3-10 seconds and can have drastic impacts on gameplay.
The most prominent example here is “Arcane Soul”, a buff that lasts for 3 to 5.5 seconds (the exact duration depends on various factors). During this time, I can spam a spell that acts as my “finisher”. As long as the buff is active, this finisher does not consume my built-up resources but replenishes them directly.
However, if I miss this time window by even a fraction of a second, my finisher uses up all resources, and I stand there like a deer caught in headlights on the road. Then I have to slowly build up my resources again and am extremely useless for several seconds.
The problem is: I can’t keep an eye on all the different buffs and procs at the same time. Of course, I could stare at my buff bar permanently. But since new effects are always coming in, there’s constant movement, and the buffs shift in their position. Not to mention that I also want to keep an eye on the world to avoid standing in the next big boss attack.
Addons fix what Blizzard cannot
The only answer to this is interface addons that display the effects much more clearly to me.
So far, I’ve successfully avoided addons like “WeakAuras,” which allow you to display more information clearly. But if I want to play the arcane mage in endgame, I can’t avoid it anymore. The standard WoW interface simply does not provide enough options to meaningfully display all relevant—and sometimes very short—buffs of the arcane mage. The hero talents have drastically exacerbated this problem.
My criticism is not that hero talents can be complex and require extensive interaction. That is a good thing in itself if you enjoy this complexity.
What bothers me is the standard WoW interface, which is simply not designed for this flood of information. There is no clear way to get exactly the necessary information at a glance—not even after the major interface rework from Dragonflight.
I could live with such a lack if it were about mythical raids for the top 1% of players or PvP skirmishes at the highest level. But when a core feature like the hero talents—affecting all players—is no longer clearly readable in the interface, it’s a design weakness that should be addressed.
For the first time in my nearly 20 years of WoW, I feel: If I want to play this class, then I have to use an addon.
Overall, I find the hero talents quite coherent, visually appealing, and interesting. However, it is unfortunately evident in many places that the standard WoW interface is not really capable of presenting the information of increasing complexity clearly enough to be easily found at a glance.
I hope that Blizzard will improve things a bit. Because while I am quite positive towards interface addons, one should never feel in the game that it is just not possible without these addons. And that is currently the case with some hero talents. Perhaps Blizzard will manage improvements—although I doubt this will happen before the release of the new content.
