Everything We Know About Hero Talents in WoW's War Within
Hero Talents, World of Warcraft, War Within Expansion
- The War Within expansion will introduce Hero Talents for players once they reach level 71.
- All classes will have three Hero Talents Trees to choose from, two per specialization.
- Druids will have four Hero Talent Trees to choose from, and Demon Hunters will have only two.
World of Warcraft’s next big expansion, The War Within, releases later this year and new information is starting to emerge such as the new Hero Talent System. The War Within Hero Talent system will focus on giving more customization and specialization options to players to further create distinct play-styles. Here is everything we know about the Hero Talent System so far in World of Warcraft: The War Within.
What Are Hero Talents?
Talent Trees are nothing new to World of Warcraft, or to video games in general. The struggle with talent trees in competitive games, or games like WoW is creating a system that allows players to pick and choose abilities that fit their play-style. More often than not when there are talent trees in a game, there ends up being an optimal path players should choose.
In The War Within, the new Hero Talents, which will unlock at level 71, aim to further augment and strengthen class builds instead of changing them entirely. Each class (with the exception of Druid and Demon Hunter) will have three new options to choose from. Each option overlaps with one of the three specialization types.
Unlike normal talent trees, there isn’t a choice beyond choosing one of those three new options. Each time a player levels, they can pick up one of the 11 nodes and by level 80, have all of them.
In the Blue Dev Post about these new Talent Trees, Blizzard says they want to maintain the players right to choose. The hope is that each of these Talent Trees will have merit regardless of the content you’re running. Players should choose the options that have the gameplay, visuals or aesthetic that they think fits with their character and playstyle.
The First Eight Talent Trees
World of Warcraft: The War Within is still quite a ways away, so a lot of these talent trees may change in the future. So far, Blizzard has released eight of the trees which includes; Elune’s Chosen and Wildstalker for Druid, Scalecommander for Evoker, Herald of the Sun and Templar for Paladin, Trickster for Rogue and Diabolist and Colossus for Warlock.
Each class will have access to two different talent trees they can access based on the specialization they choose. For Balance Druids who focus on ranged DPS and Guardian Druids who focus on tanking, they can both access Elune’s Chosen.
You can check out the full breakdown of all the abilities for each of the eight talent trees here. Elune’s Chosen focuses on embracing the aesthetic and lore of the Moon Goddess. Balance and Guardian Druid are very different classes, so most of the abilities and augmentations do something different for each specialization. But they all revolve around moonlight and embracing Elune.
Will Hero Talents Be Good?
The biggest question players should have is whether or not Hero Talents are a good addition to the game. The philosophy behind Blizzard's decisions seem well and good, but at the end of the day it’s just an illusion of choice that gives players the sense of progression.
By level 80 you’ll have all of the nodes and you can swap freely between talent trees and specializations based on your needs. But the biggest let down is that this was an opportunity for Blizzard to do something really unique and cool and tie specializations together in some way that otherwise couldn’t be more different from one another.
It’s not an easy task to do, but by giving each node completely separate effects for one specialization as opposed to the other specialization seems uninspired. Choosing Wildstalker for Feral Druid is fine, you get better at dealing DPS and if you choose it as a Restoration Druid you get better at healing. Why have them both under the same option if they’re doing completely different things for the class?
Ultimately, Hero Talent Trees are just more talents, it’s the same thing World of Warcraft has been giving players since day one. Which is great for people who don’t like change, but a let down for anything hoping to see the systems further evolve.
