WoW News

“Apex Talents” and New Hero Talent Lanes for Every Spec in Midnight – MarcelianOnline Interview with Blizzard

MarcelianOnline interviewed Paul Kubit (Associate Game Director) and Jade Martin (Lead Combat Systems Designer) on the new Apex Talents, the new Demon Hunter Hero talent tree, the Tank and Healer shortage and more!

Make sure to check out the full video for the full context, but we're summarized the important points and new information below.

Talents

There are 10 new talent points coming in Midnight.
3 Points in the Class Tree

3 Points in the Hero Talent Tree

4 Points in the Spec Tree

The Class Tree will not have anything new.
There will be a 4th lane of new talents for every hero talent tree.

New Apex Talents

There will be new "Apex Talents" in the spec tree.
It has a unique multi-talent, multi-rank node.

It has 4 points that you can put into it.

Each point should feel very impactful, especially the first and the last node.

Very gameplay impacting changes to a signature ability to your spec.

For the Devourer Demon Hunter, the first point of this node is Collapsing Star always crits, the 2nd and 3rd increases your Void and Cosmic damage and the 4th node gives you scaling on your crit damage.

It is not required to put the extra points into the Apex Talents, but it is strongly encouraged.

Demon Hunter

Void Elf DHs will be unlocked as part of the Pre-Patch after a short quest.

They are aware that this creates an imbalance for the Horde but this was a really good story fit.

The Worldsoul Saga is not over yet, there are other cool story fits for other race/class combinations in the future.

Devourer Demon Hunter

It's mid range similar to Evokers

It actually has two playstyles: one plays at midrange like a caster but the other is the hybrid, dashing in and out of melee combat.

There is no green in any ability; you are not using any fel at all.

Annihilator Hero Talent

There is a new DH Hero talent, name pending. The leading contender is Annihilator.

Vengeance will share this Hero talent with Devourer and lose Fel Scarred

The tree calls down Void comets for Devourer and Fel Meteors for Vengeance

Raids

March of Quel'danas is unlocked a couple weeks after Voidspire. Expect a difficulty increase here.

All three raids are part of the same tier.

The one-boss raid's difficulty is expected to be in the middle of the difficulty curve of Voidspsire.

Open World / Prey

Prey has some really cool rewards

Nightmare difficulty can be expected to be about the same difficulty as some of the more difficult delves.

There will also be power rewards that will mix with the rows you get from Delves.

Tank and Healer Shortage

They see challenges in finding groups. It really affects everyone.

In Midnight, they're focusing on making the queueing experience better and easier to find the group you're looking for.

They want for someone who's posting a group to be able to share what the intent is and then allow people searching for groups to be able to filter for that.

Playing tank and healer is a big ask.

They do have some plans in wanting to make tanks and healers more approachable or forgiving down the road.

Playing tanks should be fun -- you should be able to do damage, you should be able to live forever, but you have to be able to die at some point or else you'll never die in raid.

Healers is very similar. They can make the damage smoother even in an infinitely scaling system like Mythic+

Weakaura Requirements for Classes

The necessity of Weakauras to play a spec is a problem.

Some examples include Outlaw Rogue and the management of Festering Wounds as Unholy DK

They'll look at these and say "do they need to exist" and see if a rework is needed.

Jade MartinOn the necessity of needing Weakauras to play Outlaw Rogue, from a combat design standpoint, that's a problem. If a player feels like the only way to play their class is to go to a 3rd party site, download some Weakauras, hop into WoW and then you start playing, there's probably something wrong. We're probably not giving you the best experience we can from a combat design standpoint.

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