WoW Dragonflight is set to completely overhaul the existing talent system in Blizzard’s long-tenured MMORPG. Rather than the pick-from-three system that’s been in place since Mists of Pandaria, the new system replicates the more complex talent trees of old, but with a fresh lick of paint.
However, as with any change of this magnitude, they have plenty of teething troubles to deal with. With extensive testing being done on the alpha servers they have plenty of player feedback to work off of, and a recent blue post on the WoW forums addresses a number of issues raised by the community about the Monk trees. Let’s go through the broad strokes.
Some players have called attention to the arguably strange layout of the Mistweaver tree, with abilities that have seemingly good synergy not placed near each other. Community manager Kaivax explains this, saying that “we want to maintain pathing tension, so that players feel engaged”. In short, they want to make sure that players have difficult choices and a variety of mutually exclusive options, regardless of build.
Players have also found that Monks have too many low-impact abilities with short cooldowns, leading to their core rotation feeling too cluttered and overwhelming. Blizzard have acknowledged this problem, calling particular attention to Zen Pulse as the “main offender”. They’re looking to buff the ability as well as increase its cooldown, and keep an eye on other abilities going forward.
Blizzard also addressed the ability Essence Font, which is currently at the top of the tree as a mandatory gate, a position that many players have found strange due to its selective utility. The explanation is that while it’s not a universally used ability, putting it anywhere else in the tree would sacrifice the overall health of the tree, reducing its options and clustering a range of abilities into one section.
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