What were your first impressions of Dragonflight’s new talent system?

Dragonflight is nearly upon us, and World of Warcraft’s patch 10.0, which hit the live servers this week, brought many new features and changes — chief among them, the new talent system. The return of talent trees is one of the largest changes WoW has gotten in recent years. Loved by many, dreaded by some, the fact is that the system is here to stay, providing players with a much higher power of customization than the previous talent system did — with both the boon and bane that entails.

The idea of having to tinker with so many talents may be a dire prospect for some — especially those who play multiple characters, of several different classes. However, many of us were surprised to find that the game already provided players with a default selection of talents, and that their characters were ready for action, no input required whatsoever. Sure, some of your abilities were likely changed — maybe you missed a few skills you used to have, and maybe you saw a few strange new buttons in your bars as well. But for the most part, things were almost unchanged, and it was up to each player to decide how much they wanted to play with the system.

Regardless of creating your own build, totally tailored to your own needs, or leaving the default talent selection that Blizzard gave you untouched and just rolling with it, or even opening some external site and copying a build made by the experts, the fact is that there are several benefits associated with this new system. Players can now save multiple talent loadouts, and change between them anywhere, with just a few clicks. You might have dedicated builds for leveling, dungeons, or raiding and can swap among them with ease. You can even share (or, more likely, copy) entire talent loadouts through strings — kinda like how people have been sharing (and copying) Hearthstone decks for years now. All in all, this talent system is far more complex than the previous one in many ways, but it also makes things much easier in others.

So, what were your initial impressions of the system? Did you tinker with it a lot, or was it too overwhelming at first? Did you already copy some builds, or are you using this opportunity to tailor your character’s playstyle to your own preferences? Have you taken advantage of the system for leveling characters? Personally, I’ve been leveling a Rogue, and it’s absolutely amazing that I’m able to take talents such as Shadowstep and Leeching Poison even on the Outlaw spec — something which was impossible before, and which makes leveling as that spec much easier. (It’s also really funny to have both Earth Shield and Lightning Shield at the same time on my Shaman.) Have you had any serendipitous discoveries such as that one? Are there any previously impossible talent combinations that you’re glad to have now?