Sebastian Glanzer February 28, 2024 | 1:30 p.m. World of Warcraft: Videos, guides, news and more
At BlizzCon 2023, the WoW developers announced three expansions with the World Souls Saga. The first of the three World Souls addons is The War Within, which brings hero talents into the game as a feature.
The developers of WoW have now. The War Within already introduced a lot of hero talent trees. These Hero Talent Trees are now known: San'layn Death Knight, Warden of the Grove Druid, Wildstalker Druid, Elune's Chosen Druid, Scale Commander Caller, Chronoguard Caller, Dark Ranger Hunter, Frostfire Mage, Lightforge Paladin, Herald of the Sun Paladin, Templar Paladin, Oracle Priest, Mountainthan Warrior, Colossus Warrior, Trickster Rogue and Diabolic Warlock.
On this page you can see what hero talents are in WoW: The War Within and how they work. Click on the table of contents on the left side of the page to view the hero talents for your classes.
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What are Hero Talents?
Source: Blizzard WoW The War Within: Devs show first hero talent trees for warriors & more (7) Hero talents are new, self-contained talent trees that unlock player characters at level 71. Hero Talents build on the skills and talents of the current classes and specializations. Players can choose one hero talent tree per character, and these talents can be changed in the same way that class talents can currently be changed.
There are three hero talent trees for each class (except Druid, which has four, and Demon Hunter, which has two). Each specialization has two hero talent trees to choose from, and each of these trees is available as an option for two specializations.
Source: Blizzard WoW The War Within: First draft for hero talent trees. For example, Warriors have three hero talent tree options: Slayer, Colossus, and Mountain Thane. Fury Warriors have access to Mountain Thane and Slayer, Protection Warriors have access to Mountain Thane and Colossus, and Weapon Warriors have access to Colossus and Slayer.
There are 11 nodes in a hero talent tree. The first of these is unlocked at level 71 and you get one talent point per level from 71 to 80, so up to level 80 you can unlock every talent in a tree. Starter builds will be available for Hero Talents and your saved builds will also save your chosen Hero Talents.
What you can expect from hero talents
Each hero talent tree begins with a “keystone talent” that introduces the tree's core mechanics and concept. This could be a new ability, an improvement to an existing ability or cooldown, or a new buff that you can trigger. The end of each talent tree is a “capstone talent” that builds on the core themes of the tree or gives the keystone new bonuses.
Each tree will provide or modify class strategies and include defensive bonuses useful for all specializations. Our goal is for all trees to provide roughly the same amount of strategic and defensive utility. Trees for characters that can take on a tanking role could contain additional bonuses to defense that are less valuable to healers or damage classes, such as bonuses to tanking talents or cooldowns. Three or four nodes in each talent tree will be decision points where you can choose between two options.
Hero Talents are intended to provide enough damage or healing increase to have an impact, without these new talents becoming too important and overshadowing your current class and specialization talents. Most hero talent trees add visual effects to classes that communicate what they do and bring their class fantasies to life. These are not complete visual overhauls, your class and specialization are still essentially the same and will continue to be that way.
The freedom to choose
We want to give players the opportunity to choose the hero talent tree that offers the gameplay, visuals and style they prefer. Our goal is for both options to feel equally effective in Raids, Mythic+, and PvP. We are working to best prevent abilities or bonuses in hero talent trees from making a tree feel like a “requirement” for activities.
We know that for some players, overall performance comes first, even if the difference between two choices is very small. That's fine, but keeping the balance of hero talents very close is one of our priorities so that players can play in their preferred way and still participate in content.
How we select concepts for hero talent trees
Since we announced the Hero Talents at BlizzCon, we've been keenly following the conversation and speculation surrounding the 39 Hero Talent titles. We would like to tell you more about what was behind the choice of concepts.
Any hero talent concept must fit both specializations that may choose it. Some concepts build on overlapping skills or styles between the two specializations that they can utilize, such as Colossus Warriors, which are as powerful as Weapon Warriors and as imposing as Protection Warriors. Others create new mottos appropriate for both specializations, such as the Fate-Bound Rogues.
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Hero Talents also preserve your combat role and the equipment you use, so you don't have to fight over new types of equipment. We wanted to make sure iconic Warcraft character archetypes delivered their fantasy with the World of Warcraft classes. Blademasters wouldn't be true Blademasters without abilities like Windwalk and Mirror Image, but these abilities don't fit into a warrior's arsenal.
Finally, there are several iconic character archetypes that are closely tied to specific races and factions, such as Guardians of the Grove or Mountain Thane. It's exciting to embody these storied archetypes, but we want to make sure that characters from every race and faction can see themselves in these archetypes. We're open to your feedback on what feels right for your characters or what frustrates you.
Gameplay and hero talents
We have several ideas about what we want World of Warcraft (buy now) to feel like with Hero Talents. Here are some of our guidelines on how they affect your abilities, rotation, UI, and what to look out for in combat.
As a team, we like to say that our goal for Hero Talents gameplay is to make you “what you are, but more.” We know that many of you have a long history with your favorite classes and that you play them because you like the gameplay and the spells and abilities that are important to the rotation, whether it's the Twists of Affliction or the Cycles of the Arcane or the fanatical reactivity of furor. Hero talents do not override what is important for a class. We want you to feel like you're playing your class with a twist or a boost, not like the things you care about are secondary or replaced.
A Hero Talent Tree can add new behaviors or bonuses to existing abilities, such as Grove Guardian bonuses to Force of Nature and Grove Guardian treants. You can occasionally reset the cooldowns of abilities or swap spells with more powerful versions. They can make it easier to maintain important buffs or grant additional resources at critical moments.
One thing we pay particular attention to is complexity. Classes in WoW have many skills and talents, and there is a lot to learn about each of them. Hero Talents are intended to add new fun without creating new hurdles, be it in customization or when playing a character. Most hero talent trees do not add new buttons that players need to add to their action bar or find new button bindings for.
There will be additional opportunities for players to show off their skills, but we're trying not to add things like complex, maintainable buffs that create additional cognitive load for players of this class. Most decisions related to how complex players want their rotation to be will continue to occur in the class and specialization talent tree.